My Body Steals This Poem From Me

Originally posted 3/19/2014.  

Tonight my body’s not working right
and I’m trying to keep it
from writing this poem.

It’s trying to steal itself from me,
attempting to work in first person.
I respond

butter pat,
maple sauce,
meaty arms of morning.

My body brushes that aside, barricades itself
in my hand, takes my intentions hostage
and demands the poem as ransom.

I balk at this and make
a counter offer, 
a good faith gesture with 

iron pendant,
bronze cuff,
stone talisman,

but my body rejects it
and again demands control
of the first person.

Defeated by my body’s insistence
upon its version of this moment,
I find myself once again with

elm tree,
granite slab,
late afternoon shade

no longer standing firm
on their own but chained
by my body to meaning.

My body scorns my hope
that I is not the only true word.
Perhaps I should agree and

let my body rail and fail its way
into this poem and all the others
I have not yet begun.

I am not at peace with this
but not at a loss for words,
exactly; no, I still have plenty

of those but my body
will surely steal them
and ground them in its own venality.  

My will being as weak as it is,
I fear I will not be heard
in the midst of that

so I sit and shiver
within, silent, watching my body
own me.