Dear Poetry,

Please don’t leave.
What would I do without you?

This from a writer who thought fiction
the be-all and end-all.   Poetry a valve
to let off steam while detouring around
iffy bodies of water, copperhead-infested
banks, and quagmires notorious for lurking
quicksand.  Not that creating a poem
never draws blood.  You kidding?    
The lightest fluff often comes out of
an attempt to compensate for pain caused
by picking at scabs.   But like a conscientious
nurse, it keeps a kit filled with distractions.  
If you are lucky, it also contains antiseptic
that numbs.  Like that, you are in the parking
lot, unwrapping a lollipop.   Until the call
comes.  Need to look again, ahem, ahem.
Surgery is sure to follow.  Prep’s the pits,
recovery up for grabs.  Take a lifetime?
Plus there is always the threat of having to go
back for more exploratories or to get a
dropped needle removed.  This restitched,
that repatched.  May as well mix metaphors
before the axe falls.   Often feels like hanging
with bleeding fingers to loosening rock on
the Matterhorn.  Can’t feel your nose, lashes
are icicles, pick thingie’s about to go.  Rope
or whatever it’s called came from Bargainpit.
That the sound of ice cracking?  Avalanche?
Short on supplies,  long on temper.   (Tank  
under the thermals reads Clumsy Ox.   Back.
reads TOL’ja!)

As age tosses wrenches into my bod and
swipes  at the synapses in my exhausted brain,
the bars of the dungeon where I chain my
skeletons and try to contain ghosts start to
bend from being tugged and beaten.   A chorus
taunts, Rhyme and rhythm out of chaos?  O-
kaaaaaay.   So I’m crazy.  Never said I wasn’t.
Look,  Muse,  if I forgot to thank you, I am
sorry.   Say you’ll give me another chance!

                  (c) Phyllis Jean Green, January, 2010