It's just poetry, it won't bite

The Gift of Not Being Me


02.23.18 Posted in today's words by

Elisabeth Horan’s most recent poem to appear here was “Never Shall we Fall Asunder” (December 2017)

The Gift of Not Being Me
By Elisabeth Horan 

The time?
I thought it would eat me alive
give nothing back but
Shame! Shame!

God: if I stop and you spare my life—
I promise, I promise
I’ll fight the good fight
keep the good keep the sex
quit the drugs and the death

Be the glimmer
the sequins
the pearls
your pet—

Be an oyster bathing in CoC₃
your bow knows the notes to this violent sea—
aragonite, calcite—white conchiolin bones
when vacant your violin’s deepest home.

Down the long dirt roads of melancholy
I drove Dixie crazy in fields of daisies;
slayed beasts and rapists with just one kiss—
my own abyss of alchemy.

For what?
For the slaves that march to the North.
From afar, I copy your hope in the dark.
I’d eat my own yet lies can’t die—
they just don’t let me say bye-bye!
I’m dazed and ill, I teeter on the sill.

Aha! to radiant, salient hype
Aha! to your words coming down the pipe—
now plummeting at the speed of light.
In turn, we turn
to dust in forgotten urns.

That’s the gift of not being me.
That’s what I’m considering.
Is that lucky enough to overhear—
with such dear
and fawn-like tender ears?



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