The Weight of Flesh

Posted by Wicasta on 22 Feb 2024.

How I resent these stiff, tortured bones,
the aching, sweaty weight of flesh.

I would be free, formless and weightless;
a whisper on soft summer winds.

I would be strong, but incorporeal;
rolling thunder and falling rain...

Become music, and danced abandon;
slip these mortal bonds for the skies.

_{Midjourney Prompt: a poet who looks like a young Charles Bukowski sits at a Bohemian style coffee shop, small glass of absinthe, disheveled, broken-hearted but defiant, he seems to stare out the window at passersby but instead glaces at his reflection in the window, time is catching up to him --v 6.0 --ar 16:9}

   
Weight, Huh?

I found a copy of this poem in my Material archive with a filename prefix of 200. I used those prefixes to sort poems in chronoligical order once upon a time. This one was #200, and I know for a fact that #201 was written in 1992. So, at the very least, The Weight of Flesh was written prior to that, which makes it about 32 years old.

I've parked this here as a placeholder. I don't intend to do much with this Poetry section, really, but maybe feature an occasional poem. I do plan to sprinkle a book I'm working on with random poems, and maybe that's why there's a poetry page. But like most poets I have a large pile of poems, with maybe a handful I might think are actually pretty good. But I've asked myself silly old man questions such as “If you could only choose one poem to leave behind, what would it be?”

The Weight of Flesh is that poem for me. Not because it's so brilliant or anything, but simply because I think it got closer to the Truth of me better than any of the rest of the poems I've written. It's one I keep coming back to.

Make of that what you will.