Page Fifty-eight
Monday 25 January 2010 Greenfield
I’ve mentioned in my on-line journals that I wrote poetry from age 9 to age 55, at least one poem per month for all those years. Poetry, both reading it and writing it, was nearly as large a part of my life as animals were. But since I finished writing the chapbook Naked in Cold Space in August 2008, I’ve written only 3 more poems in all that time. I’ve read no poetry since that time, either. Poetry has become almost totally repugnant to me since I gave up waiting for my “protectors” to tell me where they wanted me to live, and knew I would never see even a few of my animals again.
But yesterday a poem was there in me, and wouldn’t go away (as poems often won’t), and so I wrote it down. Will there be anymore? I have no way of knowing. Since I no longer desire them, maybe the poems won’t come but once in a blue moon. But here’s the one from yesterday.
Feast
Where are the words that slash –
What are the words that slash –
(I’m starving for the slashing).
With a sword,
with a long and lean and
gleaming two-edged sword
that I alone can see,
I starve to slash.
And thirst to drink a blood
that only I can see.
None of you that stabbed me
will be safe.
None who threw the stones
will find escape.
If words are steel,
if hurt and rage and innocence are steel,
then these will forge,
have forged,
my slashing sword;
and none of you,
not one of you,
is safe.
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You can click here to a poem about living with Asperger’s.
And I should make it superfluously clear, before someone throws up their moronic hands and shouts the word “delusional” at me, that in the above poem, the sword that only I can see and the blood that only I can see are not delusional hallucinations. They are metaphors. Metaphor is a literary device that all writers use. There is no real sword swimming before my eyes, me trying to grab it, and no real blood. They are symbols. Get it?
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All photos, graphics, poems and text copyright 2008, 2009, 2010 by anne nakis, unless otherwise stated.
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