Living with the Truth Stranger than Fiction This Is Not About What You Think Milligan and Murphy Making Sense

Wednesday 26 October 2016

#682



What I Never Meant to Say



No, I really love you:
it's gone beyond words.
I just use them
because they're all I have.
They don't say anything anymore.

There was never really anything to say.


19 August 1989
 
 
This is an odd poem to write at a time when I was at my most prolific. I was on a poetic high most days and when that dipped my next fix wasn’t hard to find. And I loved that side of it. If you’ll pardon my crudity: the shit was flowing.

I’ve spent a long time looking at this poem. What’s interesting to me is how I chose to open it. With a ‘no.’ The whole poem is therefore a response. What I never meant to say was said someplace else, before the poem. I never recorded (and can’t remember) what I said or to whom. Perhaps I slipped up with B., mumbled something I shouldn’t have. I could get away with saying I loved her easily enough because she knew I loved her and she loved me. Everyone loved everyone. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord. That was how I could get so close to her because I was shielded by brotherly love. What I did and how I felt behind that shield was another matter. Mostly wrote poems and felt like crap.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

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Jim Murdoch said...

Happy to be included, Jerry.

Unknown said...

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