State of the Union

There are times when I want to leave poetry.

File the papers and be done with it.

Walk out the door, a slam at the end

of the last line. Full stop.

See ya later, alliterator.

I’m tired of poetry not paying the rent.

Tired of washing poetry’s dirty laundry.

Tired of cleaning up after poetry,

nothing but half-empty bottles

and an inbox of rejections.

Poetry, I’m even tired of your name,

how the mere mention of you can kill

a perfectly good conversation.

How even writers don’t claim you,

relegated to your own forsaken slot:

Poets and Writers.

And when was the last time you cooked

me dinner? Mowed the lawn?

Spackled the den?

You want all of me.

I can’t take a walk without you

tap-tapping in my brain, can’t wake up

without one of your lines

jolting me from dreamland.  

I’m late for work because of you.

Skip meals because of you.

Lose sleep over you.

Poetry, you are at the core of my every apple,

under the bark of the alder;

in the curve of the earthworm

and in the droplets of the nimbus cloud. 

You exist in the dimensions of the observable universe,

and in all that lies beyond.

In everything known and unknown,

in everything knowable and unknowable.

In quark (the particle) and quark (the cheese).

You are every word I attempt to write,

you are this poem, you are me

and I am you. Poetry,

I will never leave you.