Exposed
Byron Hoot

I cannot read certain authors
without feeling ashamed.
As if all my flaws are exposed.

The gift of writing
is the double-entendre:
what is said,
what is meant,
the layered lexicography
of experience,
the masterful placement
of what fits.

I kept reading - pissed, pleased, perplexed.

Not to hear the echoes of words,
not to follow the Ariadne thread -
blasphemy.