Hazard of Dancing With Sirens
Being with a poet,
maybe hazardous to your health
the Marborol Man seems to be saying;
as I speed past
his billboard,
grotesquely placed on I-70.Poets talk about things,
things everyone wants to forget,
the day Mom died,
the day she leaves for good,
the day you were so depressed,
it felt as if your soul melted away.
Ironically, poets use beautiful
words, imagery, and metaphors
to conceal their loneliness,
for them poetry is a bad girlfriend,
she causes so much emotional painthe poet hates her for that
like a moth to light a poet always
sreturns to his love.
My trip through the rapids
of the river of life continues,
continues for another day
my raft is nearly sinking
but my will remains
strong like the sun,
reflecting off the unrelenting current.
Sun burnt, wet, and renewed;
I return to the confines
of suburban life,
a much needed respite
from our prepackaged, prefabricated, sufficating western world.
Forever my river will remain
uncontained and liberating
still able to freely create and destroy,
without being tupperwared
in a suffocating container
insulated from reality.
Jeffrey J. O'Brien