Why Poetry: A Partial Autobiography

I could not learn

to become

my mother for obvious

reasons that were not obvious

to me, so I waited. I felt

as incorrect

playing baseball

as a bear cub moving in

with a family of turtles.

Other boys

sensed my fear

of them and, I now think,

were afraid

they were overlooking something

that should have

scared them: themselves.

I was always afraid of myself,

my mind, quite clearly a dangerous

place: I could think

about anything, any

horrible, depraved thing, and

whether or not I did

at that tender age, I knew

I was not safe

in my head, which was

where I knew my self was.

Childishly, I assumed

only my head was like that,

that they hated me

for an accurate, intuitive

reason. In fact,

I now think, they knew

better and hoped

that by attacking

and shaming the fear

resident in me,

in my self, they might

drive away the dark

within theirs.

Instead they expressed it

which I did not,

hence I was a good candidate

for poetry

into which one’s latent

monstrousness can seep

like moisture into good wood

for decades, a lifetime.

My monstrousness is rotting harmlessly now

in my poetry.