Poems: "The Purpose of Poetry", "What Heroin Feels Like"

The Purpose of Poetry

Poetry blows up

preconceptions, the dull,

At its best turns a

tree to a spread-legged virgin

Or takes simple stars and

shrinks them to seem

like our own lives or minds

Connected and finite.

Poetry redefines,

It stretches and yawns

As words painted anew

Blow up the canon.

8-26-08

What Heroin Feels Like

Sweet opiate tongue, lick my aching bones

Bring me back to steady, steady my shaking blood.

The needle’s like a knife, cuts like a splinter,

Draws out some poison I stored deep inside—

Leaves back impression of something like love

Or perhaps just a hint of the death that’s to come.

If you want to know what heroin feels like

Just orgasm through every vein and cell

And feel the bonebreak of a sweaty palm nightmare

Melting away as the runoff in spring.
The sweetness of sunshine breaking through cumulus

And blood-drip down arm of the body cry joy.

If you want to know what an injection can be

Just slip in the barrel and pull on the trigger

And shoot with a bullet of the sweetest black tar.

Feel warm water flowing through arteries, a wave

Tidal in scope the honeyblood liplick

Put yourself up on the shelf for a while.

If you want, however, to know the lack-need

Of heroin flitting gone down the slipstream

The spray of shot all faded away

Keep yourself on too long by one day

Metastasize smack through spirit and mind

And feel your skin break, and feel your bones crawl.

What heroin feels like is mortgaged heart and form

Pay on it daily or sickness repossess flesh

As if your guts were on loan

The spoon held all the papers

And ‘round the banker came, spoon belly all empty,

Demanded a hit and finding none ate the high

And down you spiraled down to find the lowest low

The soul could dig down

And dig down it did—

When you bottom out you’ll find what heroin is:

A temporary fix that ends up fixing you

With a collar and a shock

And no key, no end in sight.

10-24-07