Day 2: Wounded in the ... mind of a poet

So it's day 2 of the 30/30 Challenge. This was a rough one for me. I woke up with heavy thoughts on my mind... heavy thoughts that I did not want to write about. So I decided to write a poem about not wanting to write. Here is the outcome:

Fugitive
Hadassah Ayodele

at twelve, the page: a crypt
to bury ancient rage till
magic verses melted sand
in gleaming revelation.
by twenty-one, fingers learned
to crush fig leaves and light
meters tight with incense
on the altar of amnesia.
come thirty, charred skin
made good parchment,
bore testaments tattooed on
temple walls by false prophets.
death and rebirth strike in threes:
confess, release, renew.

So um, it's a sort of sonnet, lol. Yesterday's poem rolled off almost easily. A few tweaks here and there. This one was considerably more difficult. I went through several false starts. Such as:

run
from this poem
from this page
there ain't a meter
strict enough to contain
this maudlin, sentimental
hole in my morning
no ink sure enough
to stand fast against the downpours
clouding vision, judgment, control

i used to hide
in these notebooks
used to camouflage my sins
in cryptic metaphors
swampy syllables

i snatched that bad boy out of my notebook like tracks in a girlfight. before it was all said and done, i had bottled lightning, peeled potatoes, buried treasure, and rolled some scrolls. finding the right language to express an idea you're not all that comfortable having in the first place AIN'T EASY. i can't say i'm thrilled with today's poem. in a way, i kind of wish i had just written the poem i ran from in the first place. but hey, the point of the 30/30 challenge is not to create 30 brilliant masterpieces. (Right?) The point is to write, come what may. To flex that muscle through rain, sleet, hail, or dark of night.

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TODAY'S BOOK:
I had intended to re-read Gwendolyn Brooks' In the Mecca, but I couldn't find my copy, so I opted for Sonia Sanchez's Wounded in the House of a Friend.

More to come soon about this stunning volume of poetry...one quickie that probably most women have asked themselves (and maybe "their" man) at least once in life (hopefully we learn after the first time):

if i become

the other woman will i be

loved like you loved her?