I don’t escape my poems. The good ones
come after me, indict me, trouble me, hurt me,
so that I beat back the worst of myself—
the part of myself whispering things out of range.
The poem articulates what the hidden me is doing
inside the mysterious and the strange.
No one is watching. Not even me.
But there is nothing uncouth about my poetry.
The good poems don’t let things get out of hand.
They ignore the pulse of password and email
and the racing internet.
I see the madness
but the madness hasn’t knocked me out yet.
The imperial majesty and his power and all his clones
have fetched my father. The children are lost now.
I’m surviving, a million miles up—
No one in the world knows how.