Navel-Gazing*

If you look too long at you

you see nothing else. They say

the art becomes abstract and distorted,

ends up being devoured by narcissistic

demons.   (Writing as if You mattered?)

Better to write about birds,

or birds in branches in trees,

or birds in branches in trees in December.

Looking up, away, outward

is the true art of poesy, they say.

They say you are conceited in this conditional

demand that reading you means

seeing you, all guts and gruesome glory.

Self-pronounced identity poured sloppily

across white paper like dark-black blood

across white-silk sheets. They say, you

are just too raw! Seeping and spreading stains

across the innocent white fabric — now ruined

by the heartbeat of warm red iron and oxygen —

destroying forever the pretty-pristine vision we prefer.

*n. Slang