Master, why do you leave me out cold
no matter the words
I conjure and throw
with the lurches of a boxer
on the last legs of his round ?Don't you care
that as my rhythm winds down,
my fisted poems punctuating air,
that I might collapse
in a heap ?Or is that your strategy,
allowing me space
to run rings round my rage
till exhaustion, or the deafening bell,
sends me sprawling to the ground ?
Published in I Watch the Stars Go Out (1999)
