JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

Some people carry their birthright of sadness

wandering the world to a place

where their tears may distill in longing

 

As for me, I taste them in the corners of my lips

describing the whys and wherefores of my existence

somehow not of them nor they of me

 

Perhaps I am a boat that has set out on a voyage

without a compass or a star to mark

my destination in the deep on which I bob

 

No Magellan I and no Columbus

writing presumptions on the map of time

I ascertain my distance from the shore

 

By broken allegiances and names

I can’t recall.  Leviathan will swallow me

when doldrums leach the living from my heart

 

And to the waves and depths, and to the wind I say

I have a right to this small sadness

that sets my suffering off against the world’s