The Inner Chronicle

May 18

Written By Milo Vidal

How many yous have you been -

how many,

lining up inside you, to inspect you,

each one killing the last,

as in a process of creative self-destruction.

For the waiting soul knows no satisfaction.

He who fears runs crippled through the wound of time.

All your young dead - each one a sacrifice -

so that a single, unbreakable poetic core

could be expressed.

They fell like wildflowers,

claimed by madness,

with terrifying sublimity,

opening and dying in the sun.

All that childish dying,

so that you-

you, trembling like a moth-

might enter the bright eye.

You cast off your grey skin.

And finally-

finally-

you speak.

You exist,

in poetry.

Milo Vidal

Poetic Child