Some Don't - Jan 11 2025

 

Some Don’t

Jan 11 2025

That you can feel unloved

yet still have been.

That you can have a happy childhood

yet have been an unhappy child.

That you can hate

but feel unworthy,

as if such a daunting word

overpowered your petty concerns.

And doesn’t “dislike” work well enough

for someone like you?

Perhaps your trouble

was a failure to surrender.

That you held yourself

at a distance;

never quite committing,

looking in at the world

nose-to-glass.

And consider love

in all of its valences,

of which romantic love

is merely one.

… And often too transient

to really count on.

Children, of course, grow up.

Although some don’t,

emerging damaged or stunted

or simply stuck,

arrested

at some early stage;

a caterpillar, trapped in its pupa

in some in-between state,

a man-child

without the cuteness.

Perhaps it’s conviction I’m lacking.

Because it takes passion to hate

while I tend to waver;

too ambivalent

too conflict averse.

And given to forgiveness

(even if forgetting can wait).

Not myself, of course;

I’m a hanging judge

when it comes to my own offences.

Self-love?

Not a chance,

not to mention too incestuous.

No surrender here.

You’ll find this quite a departure from my usual style. Less linear. Less narrative. More risky. More space for the reader.

I think the gate-keepers of academic poetry prefer this type of poem. Which, being a prose writer at heart, doesn’t come easily to me. That is, putting the left side of my brain on hold while giving the right side free rein.

Another poem that suddenly shifts; here, from second person to first. Never sure how well this works. Is it confusing? Cheating? Grammatically unacceptable? (Even though anything goes in poetry, my inner pedant squirms uncomfortably when I take such liberties!)