Free Verse Poetry

In the middle of the night …

…having pissed off my muse twice already, I finally agreed to sit up and write

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

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In the middle of the night …

…having pissed off my muse twice already, I finally agreed to sit up and write

The poet is all laid out in pieces
like instruments on a surgical tray.
If you look with an unbidden eye
you may remark the light and
the sharpness of their angles —
the stark particulars before work starts.

Afterward — nothing feels the same.
Words flayed from skin and bone.
A limb here or a digit there,
an eye for an eye even —
but there is a poem written.

She says: “Once an artist
offered me his own ear
that his paint might capture
the pain of the night sky.”

On the surgeon’s table,
the poem forgets to breathe.