I’m well aware that they are laying poems
out on slabs these days – dissecting them –
dropping their heart, their mind, their guts
into little dishes and putting their cells under
a microscope.  They scrape under fingernails
for evidence and chart wounds, both long since
sustained and newly acquired, on a diagram for
future reference.  They drain their blood and
pump them full of something they say will
preserve them, something as insanely unnatural
as the exercise itself, only to then abandon
them, alone, in the long dark night
as if they never existed.
My poems do not wish to be undressed
and undone, poked and prodded, severed
or sliced, only to be forgotten at the turning
of a page.  They want to fly, burn, breath, rage
and urge from you the conversation we would
not otherwise have had.  They want your
instinct, your humanity - understanding –
and not the scalpel or the thin white gloves
that keep us from actually touching.  So, if I
say the horse was just a horse, that the colors
were randomly chosen or that I hung a moon
in the middle of a poem for no particular
reason at all, just let me have that –
but don’t believe me.
.