brave

if i were wise as people think, i would stop
and cut ties now, while all our
soul-threads are still fine and like
spider-webs crisscrossing between us.
already there are spots getting 
tighter and denser, when i move
i can already feel you on the other end.


if i were kind to myself i would start
walking away, while distance can still
heal whatever gaping wound your absence
will tear upon me, while the memories
to be emptied are still in mangeable bundles,
easily buried in practical things
like work and obligations


if i were strong i would simply grit my teeth
and let it pass, this nausea of the heart,
because something posing as love has tickled its throat,
but i have tasted this before, sweet, sickening,
and false--- because it leaves me feeling
even more hungry and empty,
and starved.


but i am only brave
so instead i will tell you what my soul says
despite its folly, and its cruelty
and its weakness;
and then i will not run away
so you will not have to be
anything.

~~~~~~~~~

This is something I wrote on the edge of a breaking heart sometime in 2001. I found a copy of it pasted on the back cover of an old journal as I was clearing space for my craft materials. I miss those days when I could write poems like a mad raging river flowing to the sea. My inspirations then were different and my needs were always too big and too grand for me.

I would one day like to publish a small book of poetry. It has been an old dream of mine, back when there were more people actually reading poetry. I once went to a poetry reading in a bookshop in 2000. A young woman who was by then a professional feature writer with her own cult following approached me and asked for a copy of my poem which I had read at the event (with barely controlled nervous trembling). Then she asked me to sign the copy. As if she was insuring that in case I get published and became popular in the future she would have something of me when I was nothing. It was a sweet gesture I think.