The. Plastic Bag of Youthful Death

The Plastic Bag of Youthful Death

I threw away my journals

After many years of writing

Tiny letters upon painful pages

Just as I was making the me

So public that required I

Destroy my life before it

Went any farther so as

To have the many dig

Through those years 

Almost thirty years ago

All words from college

To Chicago on a train

Of paper rail cars

Now neatly shredded

By Craig's machine secretly

Screaming words torn

So they bleed into a plastic

Bag their letters separated

Much like cutting a chicken

Into unrecognizable parts

Only the shredders teeth

Will enjoy these memories

unseasoned and raw

These many minutes with

Multiple books all five

With many pages 

Of black inked dreams

And lovers kissed or held

Reduced to indecipherable 

Polluted trees for the benefit

Of others who don't want

The real me to read as

I've always done thinking

What others may want from

Me instead of me for me

Happily me on my terms

I've now discovered this branch

Where I don't drag all that

With me across the tear-soaked

Years that shadow other writers

Full of childish learning

Fumbles on the paginotions

My own word of my own life

Belonging to me doing it better

For no one else alone

Or read to a crowd I'll never meet

The ridiculous boredom

That clouded Larkin and others

Like Rochester telling me

She thought the painting

I bought for forty bucks

Should be destroyed 

Like young men's words

No one can stand to read

Barry G. Wick