Into the Words

I write myself into a poem
Not by intention
But by accident
I am there only because
I exist, and
I refuse not to.

I sing myself into a song
Never because I will it
But because I unwill it,
I refuse, but I never
Listen to myself,
And so I am there.

If I try, I can keep myself away
By obeying the rules of form,
Of meter,
Of rhyme,
I can force notions of times gone by
Follow the rules of poets past.

I can hyphenate words,
I can take out letters and
Replace them with apostrophes;
I can bounce along
In iambic pentameter, as though
I were a car of clowns at a circus:

Putt - putt - sputter!
Putt - putt - sproing!
Putt - putt - clatter!
Putt - putt - splash!
Putt - putt - hiss!
Putt - putt - crash!

Even then the form isn't honest,
Even then the meter only rings true occasionally,
The words sound fake with letters removed,
The rhyme is without song,
As if the presence of these old forms
Indicate my pretend absence

To announce that I am only
Hiding, still there all along,
Peeking behind some punctuation mark,
Disguising myself beneath a letter's tail,
Sneaking clues into metaphors,
Dropping code into onomatopoeia.

I write myself into a poem
Not by intention
But by accident
And even the me-shaped hole
I sometimes fight to squeeze into the words
Reveals that I exist and refuse not to.