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writing poetry feels like a curse

how embarrassing
to have feelings so morosely profound
i feel i have to write them neat
with bows & encrustations
& offer them to strangers to read & comment on

i might as well shit on a canvas & call it waste-painting
but the little cancer placement i am, i cannot stop
as if i am stabbing myself over & over for a crumb of applause
the risk of death means zilch if you have an audience

most of these feelings can be surmised as:
my boyfriend is so hot i feel like sieging a castle in his honour
or; my psychologist has made me aware of the trauma of my childhood for the first time at 26
or; the climate crisis makes me want to kill myself but if i do that who will order the coffee beans at work?
& they are to be rinsed & repeated ‘til i find something else to exploit

i type on my little gay laptop while sipping on my little gay thoughts like they’re cold brew
lost in the sauce of my self pity
while trying to turn it all into ART!

if i heal too much what will i write about?
sterile hospital rooms burning like christmas lights
or; the fluctuating terror of my kiwisaver
or; the dappled sunlight on the tree bark of my inheritable mid-life heart attack
perhaps i’ll learn to hold my tongue instead

you know, i’ve never hated anything like i used to hate myself
doesn’t that just sit in your gut like clogged up shit?
it breaks my mother’s heart like a catapulted boulder against the parapets of my boyfriend’s
enemies
but at least i can joke egregiously about it now

& at the end of it all
i tell my friends i’ve been published
& they congratulate me golden
but they don’t bother to read it