I woke up and found all my deep work 
had washed away overnight,
had vanished somewhere downstream,

and my brain called it a tragedy one time.
Then my body took on the form of a cruise missile,
waiting on a destroyer for flight.  This is no tragedy;

as a cruise missile I wouldn’t even think
of this as anything more than a good joke
to be savored on my way to a real tragedy.

Six weeks ago
a smart man spoke of race and told me
that what I said I was, I was not.  He talked me
out of existence, practically; thanks, smart man.

Shortly after another smart man spoke of poetry
and told me something else I wasn’t.  I’d been that for so long
it left me a little breathess; I blued like a baby.
These poems are not poems, so I’m not therefore a…? Oh. Smart man, thanks.

A smart woman then showed me something about what manner of man I was.
I couldn’t see it at first.  A piece of me is still struggling with it
but I know it will come.  I know it will.  I have to. Thanks for that,
smart woman. Smart people want to help..

Definition, negation, redefinition: smart people 
keep setting me right. Keep me smarting; get me smarter.
No matter how idiot I am, I am grateful for smart people.
They’re good at silencing so much of what of me I need to silence.

I’ve been sure of some things since childhood; 
I was this, I was this — and I was not this other thing
I abhor.  In the new silence I am learning
that I am not those first two things and I am the third.

I will learn from this in silence.  I will surrender
my childhood and its lies.  I will burn past pages born of the lies
and render them harmless.  
I will pull a real man

from the machinery of lies and manliness
and I won’t count myself 
as much of anything again,
not for a long, long time.