What The Body Knows Before Thought

This poem.
This lump in my throat.
This love that has nowhere to go
trickles through the cracks of walls
thick with moss
along corridors and forgotten paths--
between the sweating
cold granite of pain.

I wander here
lost in syllables
and the tone of voice
owned by disappointment,
disagreement, and the purple hood
of shame.

What can these words say out loud
that haven’t been repeated
in the creases of the brain
and in so many other poems
like me?

It does no good to think
when the muscles that run
from skull to hip
ache with knowledge
that does not yield to rationalization
or even the romantic notion
of survival.

Breathe into the cadence of this war
slipped like a sliver under the skin of the page
and the rhythm will draw out the infection
and the fever heat of truth. . .
the illness trapped in the blood,
the script to be read at the funeral.