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HERETIC
I thought that I needed the drink but I don’t.
The words are there regardless and so is the pain.
It is not the drink that I need it is just the days and the life.
I know that I am getting closer to standing up in front of people and
reading my poetry.
I just wonder which guy will get up onto the stage and start to speak and what the poems will say.
Some make me more comfortable than others.
Six months ago, I could see myself climbing to the stage, shuffling the poems in my hand and starting to perform.
The words would spew from my mouth as people looked agog as if I was speaking in some foreign tongue.
Eventually they would look at each other and then start to bawl and wail.
"Who is this guy?" "get him off."
Then they would screw up their own work and throw it at me.
Anything they could get their hands on would be directed at me.
I could see myself cowering behind the lectern.
My head would quickly dart from left to right as I searched for a way out the back.
No, wait, what about my poetry.
Oh to hell with it.
You can keep it.
I imagine myself fighting through the poets.
"Grab him; don’t let him leave; we want to do horrible things to him.
Wait, we have his poetry" they might say.
The last picture that I would see
was of those people burning my work and dancing around it
The way that some
have burned the American flag.
by Marc Carver
