uh-oh

No, unstrange
  And soundly sane,
Unweird and wise-constrained
    Are most my thoughts.
I’m not all hopelessly left-brained:
      My dreams have cots
And a fresh basin for wash;
    Though stained they may be,
They’ve soap for the slosh.
  But, like the kitten’s whisker,
I feel it.
  I feel everything.
Every bite, every blister,
  Every strum on the gossamer.
I unreel it
    Because I want to watch it fly,
Flit the termagant sky,
      Cut the wind that can’t be
Visibly cut.
    And I know why;
I know why I need to reach for it:
  Because I’m most alive
When it claws back into me,
  Like chisel into stone,
Crack into bone;
    The pierce of it sets me free.
The agony, the pain,
      The rhymeless rain
Of joy stippling it all drop by drop;
    I’m the fish flail-flopping
On ebbing waters
  For one lucky lurch,
But to dive again and pass
  The hook by,
Knowing on a look why
    It invades my space.
These holes in my face
      Are gaping reasons to swim alone.
But I don’t.
    I won’t…I want for the singular touch
Of much more than most seem grateful for.
  I can’t be hateful…
Happiness was all along the kite.
  On lesser nights, I’d risk miss the storm;
Damn the lightning
    And damn the wind for want to
Set afire the form
      Of all I’d wish in daydream.
I’ll instead keep warm by the whim of it.
    Let others warn;
Let somebody else bleed by the thorn of it.
  I’ve bled, I’ve hurt,
I’ve been caught crooked in the jowls of it;
  But, not wholly me, it consumed
Only my fear—
    I’ve thought-bloodied towels to show for it.
So give me love.
      Pour on the laughter.
Grace me, if far less jade,
    With more and more of it,
For unafraid have I become
  Of the prickliest pretty;
Lay out before me spikes and brambles,
  Shambles and pikes,
All pits for a pitiful pity.
    But, know me wisely well enough
To be sure I’m one for the throe of it;
      Beauty’s not a luck-crazy find,
But a balm-for-bruises all ’round
    The daringly quiet mind.
I know what I know,
  And, through hellish heath or bitter brier,
I’ll don sleeves to dutch-hoe-go.
  I’ve lost my uh-oh—
Lost it a long, long time ago.

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    Poetry: Forty Winks
        https://windstrewn.com/2019/10/08/forty-winks/