Use Templates In Your Essay

A poem written while listening to a lecture in my freshman year of college about the importance of templates [Published in the 2011 Issue of Apogee; Recipient of the Best Poetry/Prose Aware for 2011]

In discussions of x
one controversial issue has been
my inability to summarize
the T.V. screen behind your eyes


On the one hand, the system argues
that the mind is nothing more
than an unopened gourd
crack it on the paper, and drain the
ink that sloshes within the husk
like the humming of bees
and you’ll know everything you
need to know
about a man

On the other hand, the poets suggest
that the skull is more of a cage
gilded, and made out of the bones of saints
locked by the dionysian gods
the angels took the keys
and swallowed them
they praise God through the teeth
of our salvation

This implies that we write
peering into our own head
on the wrong side of iron bars
gilded by the Divine Hand
the filigree blocks the soul
from spilling into Truth
and the words we write
are quick, camera flashes
like people seen as the subway car
clatters past to eternity
on wings of crumbling stone
we wish to know ourselves

Which is complicated by the fact
that we are bought creatures
our minds are held from ourselves
and the pieces we capture
and pin to paper
with black, liquid needles
pricking history with its legacy
bleeding with inner ideas
through the years
dying slowly with each eye
that devours it and spits it out

Which leads us to conclude that we
leave the hunted parts of our mind
to slaughter
and to die
the living mind, snugly held
within our cages
protecting their metaphysics
behind their trappings
privy only to
a jealous, distrustful God
and His Host

Templates, in their starkness then
may seem as a barrier
but only if we ourselves
were barrierless, still

We who break them know no better
in our childish rebellion to
instutition
But are so delusional as to be
blind
to our bars

We are prisoners
who have heard of nothing
of a world
without freedom