Fuck

The word forces one long and frustrated shove of air from your throat.  From the moment your teeth press down on the meatiest part of your lower lip, gently biting the soft, pink skin, to the rise and collapse of your tongue against the back of your throat: you finally release the trapped air in a show of endurance.  The word fucks me, as it should.

I miss writing poetry.  My old high school teacher emailed me a few weeks ago and begged me not to give it up.  I’ve thought about that for weeks now.  She felt so strongly about it.  I couldn’t believe I had ever created something someone could feel strongly about.  Normally, I would have dismissed it as an anomaly, but people’s messages and emails to me refuse to let me dismiss her—or myself, for that matter.

But the above “Fuck” is the best I mustered.  In my opinion, it isn’t bad.  I used to sexualize language when I was still very much enthralled with it, so I need to fall in love with it again in much the same, again.  So far, over these last few months on this site, I’ve discovered we can be friends.  It’s faithful and reliable.  It’ll go where I go.  Now, it’s time to trust myself with it, to give myself to it once more.  “Fuck” was all I could do today.  It was a crass, adolescent move filled with fantasies of love and harmony.  In reality, there’s sweat and slapping sounds.  I’ve got to get there with my poetry, much as I have with my prose.

This is my first poem in years, an impromptu performance, but I invite you, for my own good, to tear it morpheme by morpheme in the comment section below:

the walls die without
collapsing but
I’m not built
that way

so he
lifts me
saves saves. no
i say

i say to him no
more of me to save

no
more
he says