This Poem is a Secret

this poem is a secret,
that will splinter into a thousand untruths,
as it leaves your open lips,
bloodied and screaming,
the salt acrid around your tongue
like a guilty sea;

this poem is a secret,
that will scatter into a hidden light,
as you read its thoughts,
new words falling in cursive shadows,
convulsing strangely
upon its crumpled sheets;

why are we here.
why are we still here.

this poem is the secret
chanted into an ignorant ear,
smelling of the heaving desert air,
of the sigh of a lone date palm,
of the shifting knife-edged dunes,
a drop of vermilion blood
whirling for a moment
in a riptide of infinitude;

this poem is the secret
that fell from frozen fingers,
with the silence of the clouds after the rain,
with the absence of the sky in the haze,
a mirage folded along an unseen crease,
the inevitable cause,
the unresolved effect;

here.
still here.

 

For Poets United where the midweek prompt is “Secrecy”