POEM - For Pablo

If you were to ask me:
“What would you be, if you could be anything at all?”

Then I would say
That I would be
A Pablo Neruda poem:

One that is an over ripened
Strawberry
Crushed beneath my shoe
As I bend down to pick it,
Bleeding over everything,
Without remorse and unapologetic.
Sometimes exploding inside out,
At others, holding,
Holding back;
Until not one speck is left,
Drained, like a blanched seashell.

Running down, dripping
All that I know to be
The truest things about love:

Sloppy and silly,
Sometimes just stupid,
Green yet sad.
But so unrepentant.
And so un-terrified
How it presents itself,
How it unfolds like thunder,
Relentless as rain:

Surrenders everything
Without shame,
Without regard to fierceness.
It is every bit as life changing
As an orgasm.

That,
I would say,
Is what I wish to be
Today.

M C Biegner
5/2004