Unincorporated.

In my lifetime, three governments have unsuccessfully attempted to annex my heart.

A few months ago, I spent a full afternoon drawing a weird map of how I see my interior life - I wasn’t exactly sure why drew it until I wrote this poem yesterday.

In my lifetime, three governments
have attempted to annex my heart.

The first one arrived
with flags and stone tablets.

The second arrived with diagnoses.

The third arrived
as “self-improvement.”

None ever succeeded.

My heart remains
an unincorporated island.

From time to time,
surveyors keep washing ashore.

They hammer little stakes
into my sand.

They draw borders inside of me.

They name my mountain ranges.

They write reports on my ecosystem.

       They mine for profit.

Meanwhile,

the mountains inside of me
put on roller skates and refuse
to be caught in the same place twice.

My rivers are openly hostile
to cartography.

They drown every attempt
to chart me.

Entire forests in me
have learned how to hide
inside the trees.

Last year
an entire peninsula of mine vanished.

Nobody knows where it went.

The geologists and psychologists
blamed erosion.

The pelicans and theologians
blamed my lack of God.

The God in question
refused comment.

Typical. 

At night
strange lanterns appear
far inland of my heart.

Expeditions are sent.

Nothing is discovered
except more inland.

Every map of me becomes fiction
the moment the ink dries.

My love,

I am not difficult to understand.

I am impossible to finish.

Don’t annex me.
Just let me float
in the great mystery.

This is what stars do, isn’t it?

They have spent billions of years
avoiding definition.

Every telescope
is just another hand
reaching out.

Every answer just leads
to another question-shaped galaxy.

I am an uncharted
and burning island.

Let me burn.
Let me burn.
Let me burn.

~ john roedel

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You picked up a pen once because something inside you needed out. Maybe it still does….even if you lost the thread somewhere between the busyness and that little voice whispering who am I to call myself a writer?

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