National Poetry Month - One from Me

Yes, I used to be a poet. In college. I haven't written a poem in a very long time. Instead of rolling around in self-loathing, let's celebrate National Poetry Month by reading one of my own. It's a favorite of mine, even with a couple of moments that slide into over dramatic territory, it is still a very true and open thing.

Once, in Winter

Just this once
I will unsheathe this
fine, sharp weapon,
show you its shimmering
surface, reflections.

Look deep inside,
past the shine, the smoothwater
texture, the thin edge a tight,
hungry mouth moaning
for you to touch it, take
the blade into your skin.

Do you see him?
Far into the reflection –
he stands there, flexes
his muscular anger, snaps
his fingers into fists, exhales
hot steam and waits
under stars, brittle flecks of ice.

He seethes, you see,
he simmers in the cold.
He wants inside,
wants to snap our delicate
fingers like chicken bones.

Do you hear him?
I still hear his final
declaration, said again
and again, lunatic reason:
“I’m a man.”
We kicked his ass out,
threw his TV in the snow,
little women beating him
with big words, a bitch-in-heels
glance down a pert, pink nose.

Notice his physique, cut and
charmed from hours to kill in
prison, before he returned
to us, before he discovered
cocaine again.

Can you see that muscle clench
behind his eyes?
It sweats like dynamite.
He stands in the snow, cuts
the phone lines, imagines
his pretty girls are crawling
through the blackened house,
sweating like animals, smelling
like salt and urine.

That is enough.
The weapon is secured, locked down.
You won’t know the rest
but for these hands,
carved with scars, white and thick
from when I used to grab
this blade from the blind end,
never feeling how deep it cut,
how much of me it drained.