Poetry: damn
it for its
storm versus calm,
misplaced lightning
coming down, 
metaphor over all
trench warfare way
of life.

If it weren’t
for poetry, I’d have gotten
more sleep. Maybe I
could have been happy:

a little blinder, certainly;
maybe a tad less overwhelmed
by just breathing on Earth
among all its poisons
and attacks; missing out,

of course, on how to speak
exactingly of what
another’s skin feels like
upon my own;
or of how when 
at noon during a walk I stop
to sit on a stranger’s stone wall
and imagine that the sunlight
is the kiss of some god.

Poetry: this damned art,
this curse of primary sensation
that will not let go. If I had never known
of it, I’d be different — lesser,
yes, and I would have said yes
to that; it might
have kept me safer.