Emotional bullets
invisible fingers cocked at my temple
harmless on the surface
lethal to my spirit
You fired.
The poems were decimated.
Ink ran every where.
They died instantly.
“You dump all your anger into your poetry,”
you said
(or something like that.
It sounded like criticism.)
I was terrified to cross you
while you held a gun to my head;
so, I dropped them.
The thud echoed in the chambers of my heart,
a duet with the empty pistol.
Sixteen years later,
our marriage long dead and gone,
my life rounding the finish line
to Wholeness:
I am taking back the poems!
I found your ransom note
crumpled in my notebook.
“Your poems or your life,” it said
(as if there were a difference).
~~~
Photo Credit: Closeup of a fountain pen © Hpphoto Dreamstime.com
© 2010 by Joyce Mason
All Rights Reserved
joycemason.com
4 comments:
What an amazing poem, Joyce! Your words are clear, forceful, and evocative. I applaud this latest website of yours and look forward to getting to know you through your verse. I'm already well aware you're a master with words. Now, however, I'm getting to see your mastery in a brand new light. Congratulations and best of luck!
Thanks, Eileen! I value your support. It's surprising, now that I'm writing poems again, to imagine how I could have ever taken such a long vacation from "stitching verses." It's a true coming home.
Wow.
This is just brilliant Joyce, I absolutely love it!
All of it, every single word.
Sheer genius.
. . . I wish I had written it! ;-)
Thank you, Susannah. I really get stoked when I feel that way about a poem. What a treat for someone to tell me they feel that way about one of mine! Among my own, it's one of my favorites--and the obvious choice for "lead" poem on the new blog as I return to poetry officially after a decades-long hiatus. I guess we could call it coming back with a bang! :)
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