Like Bogart

You have run out of words,
spilled all the blood you have left.
Everyone has seen your dirty laundry,
heard your prayers, felt your desires
and fears in equal measure. All
that is left is a rehashing of old themes,
a refining, a striving to get it right,
or at least, more right, and some days
you wonder if that is worth the effort,
worth the new cutting of old flesh.
Does the blood spilled heal or hurt?
Is it spectacle or sacrifice, something done
with reason, or at least a semblance of reason.
and so you write. You twist and turn the words
that flow, almost unbidden into your mind,
a well-trained mind, trained to spill even
on the most disjointed of days, waiting for a muse
that won’t be banned by bigots and the faithful alike,
as you cut through the jungle, like Bogart,
but only half as tough.

About this poem.

Some days I wake and write what flows, and think, “Maybe they have heard all I have.” But I write anyway, because more times than not, I am the one who needs to hear what I am writing, not you.

A strange kind of greed, huh?

The picture was taken at Mass MoCA.

Bogart, in his dirty wife-beater T shirt in African Queen. The epitome of tough in my mind. I watch too many old movies.

Tom