// 1 //

                    \ .1 \

I was made in your bed,
never let it get in the way—

don’t let it go to your head, babe—
kneel, I’ll pontificate.

                    / .2 /

Muses, pray for my poetic
foremothers! Assuage their

pain’s lengthening shadow
ache exchanges for tomorrows

                    \ .3 \

swallowed doubts of going
on extend. Unending sorrow

I’m better than mending, ending
altogether intentions

                    / .4 /

of bitter men who bend
until brittle anguished mental

armour it should be criminal
to defend against them.

                    \ .5 \

Breath of readers paints with
a praise all who value art, art’s

value appreciates—renews,
invigorates, creates—

                    / .6 /

increases on the uptake what
changes their chosen fates

when mouthing again and
again their unfading names none

                    \ .7 \

can erase, no matter
the strain of their wits’ own blades dragged

across the opened veins poisoned
by their towering fame.

                    / .8 /

Say aloud what silence contains,
the songs of those women

whose craft’s woven into
mine’s overflowing DNA:

                    \ .9 \

Dickinson, Sexton, Plath!
In their madnesses’ aftermaths

had chapters to say the volume
of mine now elevates.

                    / .10 /

Confessional, questionably
sane, as always, never,

only sometimes the same.
So brazen when statement-making,

                    \ .11 \

unashamed until I
take the time to contemplate what

game my mouth plays and sublimate
how distastefully its

                    / .12 /

invasive waste alienates
those whose complacency

my solitude evades.
Taking the place of the pulse my

                    \ .13 \

heart awaits, the prince who
never came comes across as my

shade portrays with swagger what toll
my lowliness rakes. With

                    // 2 //

                    \ .1 \

holiest howl he rolls out these
blunt unsolicited

missives we pen all
third-person and royally in

                    / .2 /

the gracelessness of our
misperceived greatness—each of which

pisses off people, a bout of
unkindest hubris kohl’d

                    \ .3 \

evil enervates with its moods’
disgraceful shale cinder

fanning to fullness of
flame this mask’s crackling veneer I

                    / .4 /

wear as my shield. Battle
softening wronged steel twisting to

a crown, offense taken to frame
my skull oftener than

                    \ .5 \

not afraid to convey what feigned
miserable things it’s

not really full of, but
masquerades—an underworld wrought

                    / .6 /

with secret griefs unsaid,
unadulterated thoughts I

more often should process. As my
bravest, sagest mistress

                    \ .7 \

influences did, putting to
page whatever spills, no

matter how strange. That I’m
as much this same mess as those I

                    / .8 /

profess to protect my
Self from—no strangers to its pull

when repressed—its appeal strongest
to them, the strangest ones

                    \ .9 \

who read me and see and want some
connection—to be and

be believed—these brethren
bereaved for whom my myth’s telling

                    / .10 /

reflection’s a dream I
forever seem never to want

to unsettle or wake, but in
getting up the strength what

                    \ .11 \

weighs me down brings them a way to
feel what they wish they could

say. Which is the ordeal
I undertake taking the path

                    / .12 /

those three of so many
literary dames I dig—whose

bigger names I invoked—scorched so
that I might pave its road

                    \ .13 \

with gold, not only sow my oats.
Its artery opened

emboldens to cut close
we whose hurt never edits out!