I think I was born with a piece of my soul missing,
That’s my main theory, at least
Other people seem to have been made for living
I appear to have been born
a different beast.
Other people flirt and romance with,
so they say, a spark
I sound like a bad actor saying their lines
and barely hitting their mark.
So awkward
it hurts.
Some poets can write on love and ‘count the ways’
It’d be nice,
if I had that kind of song
but I’m just there to fill the days
until someone of substance comes along.
My heart’s closing like a fist
the best line came from someone else, no surprise
I should just count down the lines
till there’s rust on my chest
and no more rhymes.
I’m sure there’s a host of reasons
to keep the heart fired up
but I’m tired, and I think it’s time
to give up the ghost.
I don’t have much on my balance list, to start:
just bad poems and alexithymia.
For those abacus hearts
I am a feral child, grimier
than the others and inarticulate.
Them’s the breaks -
I was not made to be a lover,
just a baked earth half-man,
all awkward stims and figulate.
I am of the alchemy
of terracotta and crude words.
Can you see?
They look right through me;
at this point, I settle for being heard.
Maybe I should return to the kiln
and scour all the defects away.
Call it what you like:
addiction, disability, social illness
all anyone sees are errors in the clay.
My poems, my rhymes come down like a brick
I’m not graced
with a tongue for twee bookstore lyrics.
Still I’d like to say:
love’s the only heat that doesn’t leave me sick
I just wish it didn’t make me feel like human waste.
