The Right to Write The Need to Bleed

I am a poet.  I am a poet, not necessarily by choice but perhaps, by selection, genetic predisposition, or mere chance.  I am a poet because life’s wounds cannot heal until I bleed them onto the page.  Rarely have I ever been inspired to write happy poems.  I have always thought, and said, that I live my joy and write my sorrow.

And so, I have decided, over the next few newsletters, to share with you some of the poems that, I believe, in many ways, define me.. or at least, define my sense of what poetry is and what poetry does for the poet and, hopefully, for the reader.  Some of the poems, I will be sharing, have been recently written and some, are poems that were written over the years.  All, are reflections of how deeply I feel and how important it is to me to share those feelings through the purge of poetry.

I hope you will, over the next few weeks, journey with me into the poems that have saved me, reenergized me, released me from feelings that would have, otherwise, overwhelmed me.  I hope you will, with me, indulge in the passion of poetry…

WITHOUT VIRTUE

“…mere distaste for horror is not some kind of virtue.” – Judson Jerome, “Abhorrent Acts”

I eat no meat
no red meat packed
in plastic with a sanitary
pad to staunch the blood still
oozing long after the butcher’s
knife has changed the shape
of flank and thigh of hip
and belly into a line that better
fits the pan: “Man after all
must eat and what’s alive
must anyway eventually die.”

No more than seven Grandma Lizzie
took me to the Kosher
chicken Farm    we eyed
the roisterous antics of the flock
looking for (I swear I never
had the slightest inkling what)  but soon
her less than five-foot frame
straightened 
her pointed
finger aimed death
squawked    flapped and bled
and I went dinner-less to bed.

Today I am afraid of bombs
terrorists the wild imaginings
of greedy men 
cannot bear
to hear the newscast voices claim
the gore as glory   so I live mute
within my poems and cause
no pain and I 
believe…

…that virtue
is not born of abstinence
or even affirmation of a righteous cause
but late at night when light leaves only
memory of itself behind and dreams are
blind insinuations of the life you lead
my dreams are whole
unbutchered
they do not bleed…