Sonnet to Myself

- for Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I have run breathess through the night

knowing love, anything but an empty force,

and I couldn't stop my feet, tearing up so bright

the night, where day is briefly divorced.

I have run myself under cold water

and forced myself through the cracks, the cracks

of this bleak web hanging, though never caught,

I have thinly escaped with the skin on my back.

I have tried so hard to pick my sight

because maggots thrive in dirty wounds, yet clean

them after all, though I could never again bite

so hard, down on despair, where I've so often been.

So many times I've nearly died, but always I rise

like a phoenix from my ashes, up towards heaven, back down into the fire.