Diamond Cutter

 

so much poetry. i have been writing so much poetry this year. it is pouring out of me, and i

cannot attribute it all to a single poetry slam to a single whim that took me there, a

moment.

 

is it that i am tired of prose. i am tired of question marks. i am tired of questions.

 

if i write it in poetry, if i take the messy substance of it and make it small and sharp and

defined, crystallize the lumps of coal, will my life take on jeweled shapes, will it be strong

and solid and shining. it will. it will.

 

poetry came out of pain, at first. broken-hearted love poetry, terrible poetry, sad and

pathetic poetry. but maybe that was truer than this. maybe that awkwardness that late

teenage angst was more naked, more true, more important than my attempting to shape

every confusion every moment of love or fear or insight into crystal. what am i afraid of

losing.

 

is this why i can’t write a novel.

 

(is it that it is all right to say anything in a poem, no matter who it hurts. we will forgive

anything that is beautiful enough.)

 

i wanted to write you poems today.

 

not write poems to you. that can be saved for the one who won’t write anything, and the

one who writes rarely, and hides the words. i write poems to them, poems for them. i

wanted to write you poetry, you as poetry, because you are poetry and don’t know it.

 

sunlight on the water
a sprig of bougainvillea, brilliant, deceptive, layered
the colors are in the leaves, not the flowers
shards of beach glass (only some have blurred edges)
candles
a forest of candles, blazing
ice ice ice

sometimes

a warm afghan, and hot tea, on a cold evening

one could spend hours tracing the lines of your bones.

 

why am i so fascinated by bones. are we all. the death within them. the power and fragility

of them. sometimes, i want to swallow someone whole, to suck away the flesh and blood

and sinew, until they are entirely devoured, until there is nothing left but strong and fragile

bones. am i so lonely, despite everything. are we all. are we

 

all trying so hard. but i can’t stop, of course. no point in that. just keep trying and asking

and living and hoping and wondering if there were ever a single damned definitive answer.

 

i have loved so much, so many. even that, i don’t believe, sometimes. did i love them, or

did i need to love. what is this clenching of the heart, this tightness of the throat.

hormones, and physicality. how can they matter. and after all, i can be moved to tears by

the local news, by a crying child, by a single high note, a bad and sentimental book, by

sunlight on the water, incomprehensibility and lack of answers.

 

enough. exhausted, and cold.

 

i want to go back. i want to edit and shape and cut and make this a diamond, to offer you. i

don’t even like diamonds. colorless beasties. i’m leaving it. it is not yet a poem.

 

maybe that’s a good thing.
maybe.

 

*****

 

10/9/1998