Poems are not for happy days,

For resolutions and self-promises,

For being tough and unresponsive,

Poems are not for new beginnings.

Poems are searching, searing, morbid,

They turn you in and leave the sun,

Poems seek out your obsessions,

They tickle them, they wrap them in a bow.

Poems are not for going out and doing,

For being your great mechanical self.

Poems prevent you from taking a step.

Poems return you to previous scenes,

Pains and horrors and all things remote.

Poems throw a collar around your neck

And pull and pull till you’re out of breath.

But poems return you to what you’d forgotten,

To who you are, away from the eyes,

Away from the doing, the willing, achieving,

Poems just are, your being, your self.