Sometimes a Poem is No More

than the Diary of a Beautiful Idiot

Left Open on the Lawn

“Our times are still not safe and sane enough

for faces to show ordinary sorrow.”

                               ~Wistawa Szymborska

My dreams tell me I’ve been hiding

my outlandishness just to get along.

If anything, psyches favor travesty.

See how a broken heart goes on 

banging its drum

beneath a camouflage of cloth

like some beautiful idiot 

meant for sacrifice.

I have to remind myself

that what I’m writing is 

not a flagrant diary

filled with dichotomies

too unwieldy for memory to hold,

each line easily devolving

into a way to see

where the next line will take me.

For instance:

Last night I shat myself

on my way to visit my mother.

I could tell she could smell me.

Wrapping myself in a peacoat

like a fetid blue cocoon,

I woke convinced 

I could not be loved.

So I keep trying to be ordinary.

Not realizing what makes me different

is what could make me great.

Still, I embrace my vulnerabilities,

my wounded intelligence,

my historical youth

crowned in mid-age by

a heart full of stents;

 a tarot card

wounding me

for the better

with it’s swords.

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