An Apology to “Cutter” Poets

How can I show you the broken thing
that is me
and satisfy your need for art?
Poems about self-harm were ridiculed
even by those who were not bad,
who did not look upon the world
with cruel and selfish eyes.
The genre was called “cutting poems”,
and its practitioners “cutters”.
Uniformly, they were young,
and so their lines of doggerel dismissed
as fleeting self-absorption forged
inside a mind preening.
Regardless of whether they innovated,
or wrought their tidings in cliche,
they came to our table
with bags full of pain
wanting to put them down, somehow.
And in return were chided for
their lack of artistry.

Feeling the urge to wrack my heart,
to place it bodily inside a strainer
and bleed it of pain,
to somehow connect without saying
that “I am worthless, please convince me
that I’m not”... I’d like to apologise.
I’m sorry that you tried to find
in verse about cutting
a means to not put blade on flesh,
and I turned you away
for not being Shakespeare.
That I heard your cry for help
and told you to word it better.