Reading a Poem

When reading a poem aloud to an audience, the poet often wishes to communicate pain and anger. The kind that says, "This is my pain, so you cannot understand. But I'm going to subject you to five pages of my insecurities while you look at my purple hair and nose ring. And I'll blabber on and on about how my daddy doesn't love me. And you are going to praise me or else!" It's that pain that makes it all so special. It's the pain of showering in nopal. Thousands of picos covering every available piece of flesh. And I bathe in them, wishing to cleanse the pollution of the modern world with picos of grandma's cactus that I only met in old photographs and stories that craft my imagination, so that is where I bathe. That is all I have left. The non-existent memory of a cactus standing chueco on the side of a house I never visited in a dusty, hot pueblo I never knew. Yet I bathe in the idea brought forth by my imagination that I might have known, only if things had been different. I might be fulfilled only if the stars were correctly aligned an only if my futile cries and prayers had been addressed. Now I can do nothing but stand her showing in my imaginary cactus with picos sticking, I wash in the lather of my own blood, thick and sticky when I really want nothing more than to lay in a bed of roses with you gently running my fingers across your beautiful soft skin. Smelling the scent of a field of wildflowers each time you exhale. Getting lost in the moment of your glance. Wouldn't that be something? That would have to be a different poem altogether.