I was once asked to put my nature into single word,
Describe my life in just a couple letters.
I probably said I’m kind, or pretty, or I’m smart.
I probably proved myself a desperate, thoughtless adolescent.
How can a word speak of a person’s heart?
How can a soul have any meaning or intention?
Don’t care if there are words as many as the beating hearts
Or if before me poets mastered naming feelings.
Never before have I denied the strength of speeches,
Myself I turn to words from inside out.
But I’m not made of them; I’m not a sentence, I’m a human being.
My wrongs can’t quickly be, on paper, written right.
Photo credits from the film: “Poem Field #2” (1971) by Stan Vanderbeek.
