The Poetry Marathon

After Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Miles to go before I sleep,
lives to run before I close my eyes.
I see the mothers, they weep
at their children’s bedsides.

The day has come to an end.
Why fix what was not broken,
you take my life for granted, not for what it meant.
But our conversation is over, you have spoken

words that gutted out my vocabulary
and I have cried the tears like spears,
does this mean you are my adversary?
Listen to my words, don’t you hear

the sadness that looms behind the corner?
Are you like that horse who thinks it queer
to park afar from a farmhouse? The farmer
disagrees, ploughing the fields without a soul near.

You want distance,
I wish for you to sleep in my bed.
You tell me to stop my resistance,
but now my pillow is all soggy and wet.

It has been ten years since I last set foot
into a bodice of water.
It’s not that I don’t shower,
or take a bath from time to time.

I used to say I don’t like
to swim. I don’t like
to exercise the power of my arms
connected to my shoulders
connected to my body.
Oh god, my body,

Where to start?
At my toes, guaranteed
to send me straight into a dissociated spree.
Or my fingers, the pull and stretch
of skin over bone.

That same skin
will wrinkle in the pools
of children’s toxins
and old people’s skin patches.

Dentures float around
while I try to tell myself,
it’s okay, no one is looking at you anyway.
Maybe I don’t like swimming,
or maybe I just don’t like the public-
ness of it all.