Day 5: Anthem

Sigh.  I suck at titles.  Also, I seriously had to get through like 8 different throw away starts to get to this poem (which initially started with the line "I can't write this shit").

Writing tip 1: When you can't think of what to write, write what you can't write.  Then write.

Day 5 was a struggle.  But it's done. 

Anthem

Being a poet means

living edgelessly on the verge, always

feeling like you're

free-

falling through layers of life and line-breaks and

vulnerability and there are

so many poems I am too scared to write. 

There are words I

swallow like songs my mother sung me that will

kill me one day or

explode in poetic battle of rainstorm --

there are so many ways of fighting against a poem.

Pushing away the big words that invite fear and

working only with the smaller ones that will

coat the lining of your stomach -

this shit is real;

living is no joke and witnessing this through

poeming is

some sort of Fucked Up most days, but

I will write instead that

my body is an anthem I will learn to stand up for, so

I sweat from the outside in.

Let it pool in the cells between my ribcage to

make saltwater baths for the emotions to float on like the

Dead Sea, but

everything in me is the opposite --
like my ribcage is really a rib-liberation, and
saltwater makes everything sink;
like the Dead Sea is really alive and the

empty spaces are overflowing and

my heart makes breaking fall together --

there are so many ways of fighting against a poem:

so many ways of forgetting

what it feels like

to be alive.