I Am a Poet Who Doesn't Know How to Survive the Poem

The poem offers to help me get home safe
The poem does not get me home safe.
The poem is violent
enough.
I wonder how the poem will know it is finished
using me as a vessel.
I wonder if the poem knows it is wrecking my life. 
The poem wrecks my life. 
My life is not the poem’s to take. 
Yet it does. Again and again. 

I am a poet who cannot write about the poem that holds me captive. 

I am a poet and the poem makes me sick
when I think about it. 
I think about the poem every day. 
I see the poem when I close my eyes at night. 
Sometimes on the street, too. 

I am a poet who remembers how the poem feels inside me. 
I am a poet who remembers telling the poem I just want to go home.
The poem is not really a poem. 
The poem is a dirty secret in my mouth.
It exposes me on the bus
then tells me I’m going to be okay. 
It kisses me like it isn’t destroying me.
It says it will let me go home
after it is finished with me.  

Shame is conceived that night 
and I misname it as mine.
But as it grows it takes after the poem– 
It’s violent
enough;
It wrecks my life.

When I was younger I worked with off-the-track Thoroughbreds 
accustomed to running on nerves.
The trick was to make them believe the race was over.