by Dean Atta
Not trying to make up for my absence
From the rest of your year
I don’t want to write words that cut like paper
Sting but barely bleed
I don’t want to write my needs
Just yours and mine combined
I don’t want to write poems about you
I want to write a dedication to you
In my first published poetry collection
I want to write you promises in permanent marker
To feel real human shame if I forsake these words
I will make these words come true through you
Not by ink but with lips and tongue
Fingertips and hips
Buttocks and biceps
Feet and talcum-powdered toes
Eager earlobes
Praying palms
Forearms and forehead
One hand gripping your hair
The other stroking your chin
Hot breath on every inch of skin
I don’t want to write poems
I want to write fascinating contradictions
Not flash fiction to fulfil a literary addiction
Chasing lines into sleepless nights
Eyelids shut to reveal tattoos of you within
I don’t want to write, ‘Forgive him’
Or scrawl an invitation into sin
I don’t want to build biro bridges between you and I
I don’t want to write us walking off into the sunset
Don’t want to blot the sunrise from your eyes
Younger teacher
Student no longer
I don’t want to force revision
Of anything you would rather forget
I want to intuit what you don’t share
And sense your mystery
I don’t want to rewrite our history
Or reclaim your story as my own
I don’t want to write just because I feel so alone
I don’t want to write poems about who we were
Never were
Could’ve been
If I’d just seen the signs
If I’d just been in the right place at the right time
To receive all you were trying to give
I don’t want to write poems like that
But this is how I live.
Published 2013 by The Westbourne Press
1
© Dean Atta 2013
ISBN 978-1-908906-16-8
eISBN 978-1-908906-17-5
Dean Atta has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
Printed and bound by CPI Mackays, Chatham, ME5 8TD
The Westbourne Press
26 Westbourne Grove, London W2 5RH
www.westbournepress.co.uk