MAGIC ALPHABET

(written during a bitter depression, after quitting a job in advertising to concentrate on poetry...)

WHEN SHE READS ME
she makes me large enough to embrace the sun;
and the shy whirlwind of her silence redeems,
making the searing pain of my art's wrath seem
a pittance-price to pay for sentences that ooze
like pus from the boutonniere ulcers of my sick brain,
that shoot like blooming
fire from the vase of my clumsy skull,
that gambol out of my joy, that leap like rats from the hull
of my listing craft, ribs naked to my icy fears.

SHE KNOWS THE FEARS THAT GOAD, and those that wound:
the beat of verse ensnarled in the tick of time,
and the siren lures of what was spurned for rhyme.

What a silly, stinking waste if my choice was wrong!
BUT THEN -- let doubts be damned,
and a thousand lines be scanned,
for just one that stays to poise
in (fr)agile-figured twists of sound
hell's loves, heaven's hatreds,
skies shackled, and death's rags unbound--
all to burst like rockets and snowballs ...
when SHE reads me!
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