When I was in high school, I'd fall into this loping, irregular rhyme pattern where I'd do an internal rhyme whenever it felt right, do some end rhymes here or there for (what I guess passed for) emphasis. I've always liked that but never quite been able to get the hang of it again. This is an attempt to know as little about poetry as I did then.
To My Future Biographer
Matt Quarterman
As you scrutinize my juvenilia,
Pore over everything I ever
Scribbled you can see a pattern.
I was so serious, I have always been
So sober and clear-headed, even when I wasn't.
And I keep returning to the myth of myself
Hoping it would keep me pointed right
And that insight would keep my bearings true.
But what matters to me means less to you
And it's a fact I have to accept somehow,
Let go of the idea that we could ever see
At the morning sink where I brush my teeth
Now probably decayed and moldering
Somewhere I didn't expect to be.
I'd like you to know I don't bear a grudge,
That in that long slog through words and phrases
I trudge along with you and can bow
To whatever verdict you feel is fair.
The air is light now, crisp and clear
And I can hold lightly to all these things
Unafraid of whatever brings
You pleasure, revulsion, in whatever I've done.
I'm no open book but there's no fun in that.
Prying open the covers is what you do.
Take things for what they are or what they're not.
My books can rot and I can, too.
I don't mind you rooting around my bones
For whatever is buried with me.
I lie here quiet, give an eyeless wink
And smile my long grin at whatever you think.
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| One of the first Google Image results for "biographer." Wow, this book sounds awesomely bad! |
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