Please --

I let the moss grow under my sleeves.

 

These finger tips have lost their calluses

because the type writer forgot my inherent rhythms.

 And now I write too softly and over cautiously.

 

Awkwardly, I broach to remind myself how this happened.

 

I stopped writing poetry once I stepped into the architecture building.

Then I began building poetry.

 

I dreamed of

poetic space enlaced in the confines of your soul.

I had goals of making arches

arch your brow in awe.

 

But all i could find was that this inventive ignition within my

curiously

            relentless

                        soul

                            continued to dwindle.

 

The space-making practice started carving me out --

started removing my own poetry,

constructing hollow and fallow space.

Until the face reflected before me distorted

into an impressionistic painting with

eyes charcoaled and dull

slumping into pillows exhausting caffeine.

 

What happened?

 

I used to listen to "Howl" on repeat,

studying the parts of my body each word would reach.

 

I sat on the floors of bookstores reading poems by Plath

Dissecting the reasons for my affinity.

 

I wanted to heal with my writing

I wanted the import of poetry

to electrify your outsides like fingertips over velvet,

imbuing and soothing the turmoil within your chest.

 

I wanted my writing to invent human senses --

to inspire our immense and expansive capacities.

 

And I write with a tone of defeat.

But as I execute this exercise,

I begin to feel replete again,

because I realize the way these things work:

 

I need to make the dirt

Before I can grow.