Poem: Romeo Reads Himself

 

Romeo Reads Himself

 

blurs of crushed ants,

black bodies arranged

in rows, he’s dizzy

from the jumble

of their mandibles,

wants to leave

this puny cemetery,

 

but his eyes settle

on the corpses

as they resolve into slivers

of what he shouldn’t grasp

but does—

 

fancy sentences

that inject ache

then melt away,

like syringes of ice—

 

page after page

until the poison between the periods

no longer torments,

 

becomes cold water

he has swam—

the more he reads the closer he gets

to tragedy,

 

but it makes him young

to share the plight of a hero

or the hero’s lover—

 

it seems she loves him too,

that he is what’s written

for her to praise.

 

maybe the words

are what he is, and she, too,

 

a product of genius

that wrote this play then left,

 

leaving the characters

to love and die

forever.

 

 

 

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This poem was originally published in Merge Poetry in 2006.  I have started republishing poems on this blog due to a sense of reaching my end.  It could be WW3, it could be lack of healthcare, it could be AI's apparent threat to take over the internet itself, and so on.  That said, I am trying to live each day fully and have had a rich and full life.  Despite much travail and confusion, I kept being honest while seeking answers, especially continuing to 'Know Myself' in the sense of the ancient oracles.  It led me down a path.  And I would do it again.