Home » Poems, Secret Lives of the Colonial Poets

“I Hate Myself & Want to Die”

I believe Fame once intended to give birth to a child.
Some accident happened and I was the abortion.

B. O’D.


I look at what i wrote
& feel shame
rising like the flood 

my knees are weak &
the lamp light's glow
flatters my corny poetics 

they're simplistic
& i hate myself no that's
going too far with

my hand between
my legs to keep it warm
my secret life 

these secret lines
the waste paper bin i run
into the yard

& after dark I set
a match to watch it burn
the zero letter 

the one before this
private alphabet yearning
grasses knee-high 

in fiction cemetaries
whips crack & knees bend
beneath the weight 

of imperial leather
straps to shave leg hairs off
diving into pools & 

rivers like gunshots
into skin & areas on
maps there are zones 

where you’re welcome
at the very least a god
while the people's god 

waits in wings between
the pages of books & in
between my legs

he truth is my desires
my ambitions that stumble
on dusty streets at dusk 

look towards a house
where she's waiting wearing
starched armour & a look 

of dulled repressions
casting glances at the wilting
calendar & wiping down 

surfaces with hessian
cloth a girl i'm seen with on
some occasions but 

do not ride a horse poets
shall be known by the way
they walk on grass

fall to the earth & float
up in the sky i hate my
self & want to die
Cordite 28.1: Mulloway online October 2008

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