Michelangelo

I wanted to start this poem

with a thundering line

and thrust open the gates of awareness.

I wanted to feel the veins of a forgotten friend

beneath my fingers.

I wanted to break someone’s heart.

The line was:

‘I’ve read about the ways that men build towers,’

written in trusty iambic pentameter.

But every time I could not follow through,

my metaphor did not sit comfortably on the page,

it rolled and then refused to rest.

I had been trying to write a poem about how

I could not write poems like the masters could,

then realized that my poem was the perfect example of itself:

It could not do what I wanted it to do.

It could only do what it was born to,

and so I let it grow:

I’ve dreamed about the ways men sculpted statues,

feeling their marble blocks, rocky surfaces

cool against the heat of their cheek

searching faults in their argument

the veins that would ruin their art

working for years to bring a single vision

to life, only to see it fracture, displaced

by the slightest movement. The chisels worked to shape

the concepts and words grew those perfect nudes.

I’ve read about how sculptures were constructed, piece by piece

of marble ready as white paper.

As my mother said, you just have to draw

the face that’s already there. Or my great-grandfather,

whittle away the parts that aren’t supposed to be

and once each piece is finished, just connect them

one to the next until it starts to make sense, if it ever does.

You have to watch out for the veins.

Once I finished my poem I rewrote it again

and again, the ideas circulating, working towards

what beauty there is left to make art from.