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Self Inventory


by Bill Yarrow


Sleep like a bear grabs you and won't let go.
Hunger is an ever-opening wound,
brashness a rash whose sudden appearance
is mysterious and unnerving. Like
a long film dissolve, your dreams linger in
wild, new schemes. Your intelligence feels like
a weapon that's been fired in battle
but never been cleaned. Now regret, like a
bus backfire at 3 AM, has startled
you out of your chair. Generosity,
like a foreign city you always meant
to visit, stares at you with pleading eyes.
You're ashamed of selfishness, that blanket
whose softness and warmth you cannot give up.
Tolerance: dollars in someone else's
wallet. Arrogance: cake in the mouth of
a man too old to still be eating cake.
Life, like a kite string, is slipping out of
your hands. Wait! Is any of this true? No. 
Poems are not made of nothing but the truth.

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