"To My Defective Muse"
by
Christi Griffis
stretch a feeling over stanzas,
purge this sensation,
have some good old catharsis,
because that’s what poets do.
What’s a metaphor for regret?
Can I personify the need for forgiveness?
What’s a more beautiful way to say “I really screwed up, big time?”
Clearly,
I am no poet.
If I were Emily Dickinson or e.e. cummings,
or even someone who read their work,
if I wore black and sat in a dark café
drinking coffee and brooding,
or if I had ever brooded in my entire life,
could I be a poet,
show what I felt then,
how I never meant for it to happen like that,
how I’m sorrier than my drunken apologies could tell?
Might I write something emotional
and magnificent
and Earth-shattering
out of all the wrong I’ve done?
Maybe,
but you wouldn’t read it.