Poem On My Birthday
for William Shakespeare

1.
truth is like water: like sea water,
like river water, like weeping

2.
want to undo a virgin like I’d undo a mosquito
upon my arm, full of my blood, with a swift slap

3.
was Hemingway’s shooting himself the same gun,
out of which his novels came, the same truth
he tried to express upon the page

4.
like an inevitable needle prescribed to take,
having to go before a firing squad

bullets going into you, going through you,
to face and to accept

tough enough for whatever painful penetration
cure requires

5.
got fired, he said, for sleeping in a Bahamian flag
on guard before a government official’s house
on a windy January night

his red stripes, insufficient to keep him warm,
he wrapped a flag about himself and fell asleep

he was found like a larva asleep in a cocoon
aroused, red-handed and was sent home

6.
a poem a wall we build, assembling sound shapes
with these we connect, we skin our drums

how often, upon my ear you've whispered
over this instrument, over the years


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2006
30/march/06