The Back of My Mind (Poetry)

I have an uncommunicable disease

I have an uncommunicable disease.

That's right, I can't communicate--

communicate my need to write.

I am fevered in the night with ideas I can't portray:

the one who got away,

the silver moonlight on the lake,

my foolish fear of giving gifts.

My mind is made of metaphors

with creeking doors that hide the symbols of my thoughts:

the symbol of my helplessness,

the symbol of omnipotence,

the symbol of the difference

between belief and needing to believe.

Can't you see I can't communicate?

Can't you hear my rasping voice?

Can't you sense the beast who wants to crawl up through my throat?

Can't you tell my stomach hurts--

intestines twisting into knots,

stilled with pain before the purge?

It's gross; all that I regurgitate

are thoughts I can't communicate.

My ideas have all been said before.

I've alluded merely to the things that others knew.

Another said it better, more precisely;

he more concisely coined his phrase.

So you see I have a very uncommunicable disease,

an aching and a nauseating ill.

I'm a mewling and a puking mess

of indigestive retchedness.

But, yes, a metaphoric medicine

might sooth the symbolistic ache.