The Devil in Me
is ashamed to look you in the eye
it is abashed by the color
and settles like a tongue
craving the salt from the palm of your hands
it, the devil, takes complete possession
causing me to wander all night long
through a sleeping town
it provokes me to do this wandering
full awake, wide and full
as the night and the dead
were visions of wide green fields
to the ends of my sight
knee high grassed places,
waving in wind and sopped
in dizzied light
those sights that filled my mind
when I was young
and I was stuck inside
a dark art classroom in the basement
with one dreary but hopeful window
it, the demon, wishes the church bells would
bang together
banging the time out
on the hour
tuning my ear to the
pitch of my blood
which I hear as it creeks into the fingers and back again
to the flood of my heart
I remember my heart on film
moving like a fat, thriving parasite inside me
I lay there watching it thrive
and I hated the goddamn thing
I thought of suicides
suicides and hillsides
hills and ides
I looked at it
and thought of what people say
“follow your heart.”
a feeling I get
on valentine’s day
when I read the messages on the candy hearts
one says,
“be mine!”
I thought again of
suicides and hillsides
hills and ides
and played with my bare feet
scratching at the
dry ground
like some banty cock
David M. Morton is not a zen practitioner. Poems of his have been here and there but not too here and not too there. He usually is sitting in the middle of a field, smoking a pipe, wishing he had a biscuit in his pocket.
Adored this poem.
ReplyDeleteYes, there is a charm to it.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite poems of David's.
ReplyDelete