To XXXXX

write me a poem, she said, as though it was a party trick…

TO XXXXX

You request that I write a poem for you,
Viridian-eyed lady of the pallid hue;
With a casual comment you ask that I bleed,
For poems are born out of anguish and need-

A poem is pain and a dark, broken mind;
A poem is freedom lost, friends left behind;
A poem’s a dream that the dreamers can’t find
As they wanders the mindscape, bloodied and blind.

Yet you ask, with a smile on your Cheshire lips,
For a poem (do you know that I bleed?),
And lonely and weeping, I take out my pen,
And smother the memory and need.