On being made over

You took my neck and cracked me,

a quick switch that turned me round

from the dull pain that disturbed me.

And You, another you, said I should talk

with others, lest that pain, a pain of people,

should destroy me. I talked, but pain returned,

duller than deeper than before. I walked

down faulty trails with those whose lives were honest.

I fell, and, falling, found another You who prodded me

and taught me that the worst that I could do was

sit and think, and read and write, and I believed you. 

I pumped and primed myself to being someone else.

No doubt, it works for some, the feeling and the fondling,

the acupucture pricks, the primal tricks, the yoga-splay,

the twelve resolves by only twelve disciples,

the double-bind of four good questions, 

but a question still remains when you have done,

where will I be? 

When I am Yours', Alls that You are, 

the crucifiction of the Oughts, crystal mezusas of the Must,

the Am is slaughtered on your Might-have-beens. 

The question that I ask of you,

when you have time to relocate

your practice and this patient patient,

how will you live when I, 

affirming self at last,

turn you into a fiction,

with me the obvious author,

and that my story gives more hope

to others than your appropriation 

of me as product 

of your tight imagination?


Ioan Davies

April 9, 1995

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