—after being asked why I write so many poems about death and poetry
There’s real fun in funeral,
and in the pearly gates—the pages relate.
You know, I fall prey to
poetry,
have hated
death.
All my life,
literature has been my ritual tree—
Shakespeare with his hearse speak,
Pablo Neruda, my adorable pun.
So when I write about death and poetry,
it’s donated therapy
where I converse with
Emily Dickinson, my inky misled icon.
And when my dream songs are demon’s rags,
I dust my manuscript in a manic spurt
hoping the reader will reread
because I want the world
to pray for poets as we are only a story of paper.