I DO NOT WRITE POETRY

by Lynn

I do not write poetry about myself because

how do I articulate feelings into flourished words that roll elegantly off your tongue
when my feelings are sandpaper leaving ridges along my body?

Would you understand how I felt
if you read about the lost moon misplaced in a hazy afternoon sky
but I only dream nightmares of a sun blazing
unseen in a sleepless midnight?

Can you make sense of an inarticulate poem that I struggled to carve into paper because
my mind is a pen whose ink dried up long ago;
who once made art but got left behind
in expectations larger than my own ambition?

I Do Not Know What You Want from Me

is not an accusation directed at you because
you’ve told me every day the hundreds of things you wished I could be.

It is a protest within myself when I tell you
I cannot be <          > and you ask me
why? Because

explaining my existence is excruciating
when I am merely
existing.

Will this poem give me purpose because I am
incapable of doing so myself?
Even if I am incapable of writing poetry?

I do not write poetry about myself.
But this is my beginning
to doing things I do not do.