loose threads

i haven’t tasted enough seen enough smelled enough experienced enough to call myself “poet”/ i only travel through photographs other people took, and if you chipped at my surface for long enough, you would break through to my dark, hollow insides befouled with decay that stings the nostrils and lodges in the brain for days and weeks / regrets pile up, walking through them is like sinking into the lines on my face, why didn’t i do this? why didn’t i do that? fear is why, fear is always why, and now that i shove fear back in fear’s face, i am relieved but my eyes ache from constantly rubbing sand in them to dry the tears / your white-capped oceans churn and toss my boat but i know your depths lie calm and teeming with life, the corals of your rib cage are the tropical paradise where a cartoon fish and all his little friends live and play, and i just keep swimming, swimming through your stormy eyes because your hurricanes are tamer than my wildfires / how much of my experience is lived and how much of it is the product of a mind that can never shut itself completely off?

-rjm