RUTHLESS

E. D. Lloyd-Kimbrel

                            after Mary

I will teach you,

she said,

to be ruthless.

Greatness

can be achieved

no other way,

She said.

You will learn

to sharpen

and cut,

to do the hard prune.

You will be acolyte

to gardeners

to butchers

to desert saints,

She said.

Words

sentiments

dreams

relations

must be reduced

to hard bone

so pale in the moonlight

that it glows

with naked sanctity,

She said.

You are

good,

She said.

But

weakness lurks

softness lingers

compromise leans in

and your grip loosens.

You are in debt.

You owe to yourself

the sinew

the essence

the abandonment of all

except the elemental,

She said.

Keep nothing

that gentles

that sings regret.

Keep only that

which is harsh in its purity.

You must be great,

she said,

because anything else

is not enough.

Nothing

is enough,

I said.

I will stay as I am,

I said.

And so I was ruthless after all.

Published in Tangled Locks Journal.

I prefer not to deconstruct my poems too much—what prompted them for me may not be how readers experience them. To paraphrase something Robert Frost somewhere said—once the poem is out in the world, it is no longer simply yours. In "Ruthless," the speaker experiences a breakthrough, with a somewhat Socratic approach, in recognition of self-worth.