the poets I adore

across the razor’s edge of love
and hate and bitterness and fear
the poets I adore have crawled as worms
slit open by each slow movement

the multicoloured guts piled
and steaming in the sun
the picket fence turned to minotaur’s teeth
a human dream spoiled but grimly beautiful

this is the dream song I confect
falling back to when I was a teenager
and reading confessional poetry in bed
at my grandmother’s house

trying to form myself somehow
to push through my own worthlessness