Goddess
April is National Poetry Month. Way back when, Cosmopolitan magazine published one of my poems. This is a much more recent poem.
You are a piece of the sun scorching the earth,
sparking bonfires and wildfires and rumors.
You are infinite, ancient, yet the youngest of your kind.
Your presence disrupts their dull world,
reminding them of what they are not.
Will you burn them up before they kill you
with coldness and contradictions and longing?
Or will you turn your flames against yourself,
sparing them as you disappear into your own ashes?
I used to smoke a lot of weed and write poetry. “Upstate,” the poem Cosmo published, was written in my apartment in the Riverloft at 23rd and Walnut in Philadelphia when I was quite stoned.
I was 100 percent sober when I wrote “Goddess.”
I think I’ll dig up “Upstate” for comparison.
Gawd, I miss weed. Sometimes I really wish I didn’t need to be sober in order to survive. But moderation is not a word I understand.