An Outline for My Poetry

 

My poetry

Is not written for the cabals

of academics.

It doesn’t seek patronage.

It isn’t read at meetings

for  sycophants.

My poetry is not a wedge.

It is not written to seduce

or

to butter saints up.

A sponsored tart

my poetry is not.

 

My poetry

is written for the cross-bow of instinct,

to rupture heads.

It is written in amphibian chaos,

in the waters of the brain.

It is written in nailed condemnations

on internal crucifixes.

It is born of betrayals.

Written in an epileptic fit

is my poetry,

with coal and brimstone.

Crammed into germs it is,

written with a cactus thorn,

written with the ink-blood

of  insurgence.

 

In the cavities of the gums of the dead

poetry is written.

It is written without holy water.

It rises from a bottomless reservoir.

It is writen in hell.

In cancer wards it is written

and it coagulates instead of a pulverised lung

or lacerated organs.

It is written in the moments of thrombosis.

It is written when spiders

scourge my eyes

through nights of vulgar testimony.

 

It mocks precepts

my vagrant poetry,

shorn of a will.

It is writtten before suicide.

 

Translated by Patricia Gatt