Poem: Secret/Poet

As an adolescent,

I learned the art of poet/secret;

I would climb into the bedroom closet on all fours, enough space between the smelly, discarded shoes laces to

stretch out my body; I would somehow find comfort, if that is what you’d call it, more like respite, a kind of shelter

              to be with my secrets,

              stowed away porno’

O              masturbation never was so great as

              the closeted days,

shielded from reality,

              the ceiling gathered immense freedom

              around its enclosed haunches and

              I had secrets to bare, to the wooden

              old filing cabinet stuck, where I stowed

              my poetry, my scribbles — under

              hanging sports coats and sweaters,

              secrets being such a burden —

              they had to go somewhere,

              born from my self-imposed compulsion to translate suffering into poetry —

Poetry is couched in metaphor but never becomes what it was,

like a closet,

it still remains closed,

like a secret it is never meant to be shared.

              To put into words something about

              myself that I am unable to transcend

              is a secret/poetry like a poet makes,

              for isn’t that what the poet does?

              reveal secrets,

              lay bare the state of affairs?

the poet in me, crashes into state of affairs, crashes into a secret,

to lay bare.

© 2010 Greig Roselli