A Year After Writing My First Poem
written by: MK Kuol
that murky night,
that murky night—hours
before my cousin’s cadenced voice
fell into the damp pit of oblivion—
time slid into our shivering hands
a brief bordereau: birth
is death’s wordless warrant.
in the morning, with the lisle
of my own moan, i hanged
liyong’s blurry portrait
on the left cleft of my stagnant silence
before probing in the bones
of darkness the felicity of god’s fatherhood.
a year after writing my first poem,
my family warned: son, so we heard poets
slice poems from the skin
of their experiences. spill you no family’s secrets.
i scoffed. & asked:
how do you call them secrets,
they blazoned on the million margins
of your unanswered prayers?
the therapist tattled: a bout of grief
is a foreplay with depression.
hie down its rugged slopes on a sled of rancid rhymes.
sometimes a poem is a poet’s concession of his fate.
i stood torn like poets of my time:
to honor myself or to stay alive.
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