I wrote this poem in September, 2016 as a class exercise. The poem does not expose real confessional content but is based on genuine experience.

Confession

Grief boxes my ears like a schoolyard bully

Sorrows prance and punch like a prizefighter

Ducking and weaving to save himself

Anguish picks on me and teases my soul

These stories shoot toward me with flash and fury

 

My unprotected heart eavesdrops in the drab confessional

That a heroin addict

Just had sex in the church dumpster

With a man

In exchange for a six-pack

To manage his not-so-secret life for this morning

Until the next hit of dope

The next sucker punch

 

The narrow, dark spaces and random encounters open truth

 

My ears turn toward an elderly woman that dares to speak

About the many blows from her seven personalities

Because her mother beat her

Smeared her with feces

Left her silent in a closet

Stuffing her into an early tomb

 

Cramped spaces stifle life and hush voices

Yet repentant rage explodes from the faithful

I want to fight back

 

From the complex container of who I am

And the boxed-in notions of what we must become

A story-fire ignites in private spaces

My ears open the confines of my conscience

 

I enter the dumpster, the closet and the confessional box

Where secret voices of survival confess life at last