If I Ever Write A Poem – Maria Ji

If I Ever Write A Poem
 
If I ever write a poem
I will not let the main point parade around
dressed to the nines in simile and metaphor
bejewelled in allegory and rhyme.
 
I will let it wander around in the nude
drawing stares from puritans
shocked by anatomy they forget they possess
under their own buttoned clothes.
 
In fact, if I can have it my way,
there will not even be a main point.
I will merely write a list of facts
that will not dissipate like the noble
and nonexistent abstract concepts
that disintegrate the moment
you hit a brick wall.
 
When food is scarce lady bugs will resort to cannibalism and eat the elderly.
The common garden worm has five pairs of hearts.
Scorpions have venomous stingers but some have twelve eyes,
 
I’ll write. And I will put down the pen
knowing that I have not romanticised nor ostracised the truth
staring it down in some humanised contest
where one of us will inevitably be broken
and remade as something less than whole.
 
 

Maria Ji
Yr 13, St Cuthbert’s College