A Poet’s Self-Defence (or I am Not the I)


I am NOT the ‘I’ in these poems.

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I am not the ‘I’ who might use crude language,

Or fail to dot my ‘I’s

I am not the ‘she’, or the ‘he’

And have no paranoid illusions regarding ‘they’.

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I am NOT the ‘I’ who pines for lost lovers

Nor the ‘I’ who walks out naked into the moonlight.

I am not the ‘I’ who cries out in rage

Or the one gone insane

To the drip drop of thoughts on a page.

Not the one enticing young virgins down the lane

Or the New Age Eve kicking the balls of irascible men.


I am not the chain smoker of metaphors, condoning bad habits.

I do not take drugs, or hang out with thugs on city streets.

I am also not the one pathetically sweet

Or the ‘I’ with a voracious sexual appetite.

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I do not have a fetish for guns or web cams or fast cars.

I am not necessarily the anorexic ‘I’ with the starving poet fantasy

The unwritten novel, the uncontrollable kids

The ex-lover, or the huge debt.

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I am not the ‘I’ in these poems.

I am merely a figure of speech

A voice in a poem – the unwritten ‘I’ who writes.


© Deb Matthews-Zott