Cut Deep

It is a measure of the fragility of my life
that I am cut so deeply
by each happening;

every time I am compromised
it is as if a window long ago paiinted shut
has been thrown open into me

and all can see the walls of the wounds
from wherever
they are standing.

It’s not like that at all.
I am surprised by all of it.
I look like the people in films,

nonplussed when the crevasse
open before them in what was
solid ground. You’d think

I’d be used to it by now:
the elimination of privacy.
The poet’s cinematic life.

You get insight; I get
a script for my own overexposure
as a tunnel into art.

I wish I could tell you
it’s fine. That I am at peace
with being so open,

even if it is not
of my own doing.
Surely am close. Surely

there will closure
for having allowed
such intrusion.

That is how it goes:
let it carve me unto death
for the sake of art and others’

healing. You say: stop.
I say the blades of poetry
aren’t mine. Tell me: how

does one stop
without dying?
I need, I need, I need to know.