Poet Confessor

I You are far from a whisper; surviving where echoes fall between cracks in the floor, where the pulse of phantom tangibles beats only in your hands, loving no more, no less, no one. Witch doctors finger your spine, and ignore your soul. Run from their sagacity, the lectures of apposition; take ink for internalized pain. Your images and my next breath, collide, disappear into memory, leaving a concrete stain on the page. II You sit there, slanted in a prayer-like pose, divining harsh penance for the innocent paper you hold; as if ink were holy water flushed through your veins, and your pen, an instrument of ablution for troubled days. Silent petitions, numbered in reams, beg to lift your mind from your knees. III There are times I wish you had never picked up a pen, never wrote words that go deeper than the language of superficial friends who shop the glossy pages of magazines for caricatures to suit themselves in, who avoid passion to save their footwear. Those chums, who kiss the air and not your cheeks, are ones you can live without for weeks, and months and years. I wish you weren't a poet, whose thoughts I h(f)ear...