Old 'Poetry', part I: Ode To An Unborn Poem (ca. 2000?)

I found this while going through stacks of old papers with scribbled bits on them, mostly dating back to the couple years after high school.  Having just recently read some very good poems by a new friend of mine - they deserve their own linking post, which I'll provide soon - I was inspired to go over the various little morsels of thingies I'd tried my prosy little hands at.  This was the first one that popped up as maybe worth posting...  and also the most 'complete' (only slight editing required, a word or two added/changed here and there).  Enjoy!  (and thanks again, JSM!)

Ode To An Unborn Poem

by Novel Miseries

Hello, my child:

I write this, thinking of you,

Knowing you already -

Through your pulse which fills me

With this sick energy.

Though I do not know who or what you will be,

Only that you gestate inside me -

The product of poor judgment

And a tornado of emotion I can't control.

And that I'll push you out, not because I want to

But because it can be no other way.

I'll tell you sometimes that you were conceived

At the fireplace, in the warm glow of romance -

Other times, that you are the result of rape.

That it was a difficult labor,

So you'd better behave.

I'll threaten you with all the ones that came before you

Aborted in the third stanza,

Ripped from me by the vacuum of my mind,

Emerging a bloody mess of indistinguishable

Conjoined rhyming couplets

And half-formed metaphors -

And with the unworthy efforts of my past,

Torn from journals and discarded,

Burnt in a candle.

Forgotten, except in that dark corner of my heart

Which still aches for all the unborn potentials

And unfulfilled ideas of beauty -

And which hates for the same reasons.

I'll give you all of that

All my pain,

My selfishness and resentment - 

And try to infuse in you

The hope that sometimes seems possible

In those pyrotechnic moments of joy,

All too brief

Where everything comes together.

It may not be enough

But it's all I have.

And so I'll feed you

On strained carats and linguistic formula,

Nurture your growing form,

And carry out my duties to you -

Content in the knowledge

That you will be

Fucked up.

Fucked up -

Just like me.