What's your favorite poem?

The two you mentioned are my top 2 faves. Number 3 is Blades by CK Williams

Blades - C.K. Williams

When I was about eight, I once stabbed somebody, another kid, a little girl. I'd been hanging around in front of the supermarket near our house and when she walked by, I let her have it, right in the gap between her shirt and her shorts with a piece of broken-off car antenna I used to carry around in my pocket. It happened so fast I still don't know how I did it: I was as shocked as she was except she squealed and started yelling as though I'd plunged a knife in her and everybody in the neighborhood gathered around us, then they called the cops then the girls mother came running out of the store saying "What happened? What happened?" and the girl screamed, "He stabbed me!" and I screamed back, "I did not!" and she "you did too" and me "I didnt" and we were both crying hysterically by that time. Somebody pulled her shirt up and it was just a scratch but we went on and on and the mother, standing between us, seemed to be absolutely terrified. I still remember how she watched the first one of us and then the other with a look of complete horror- You did too! I did not! - as though we were both strangers, as though it was some natural disaster she was beholding that was beyond any mode of comprehension so all she could do was stare speechlessly at us, and then another expression came over her face one that I'd never seen before, that made me think she was going to cry herself and sweep both of us, the girl and me, into her arms to hold us against her. The police came just then, though, quieted everyone down, put the girl and the mother into a squad-car to take to the hospital and me in another to take to jail except they really only took me around the corner and let me go because the mother and daughter were black and in those days you had to do something pretty terrible to get into trouble that way.

I don't understand how we twist these things or how we get them straight again but I relived that day I don't know how many times before I realized I had it all wrong. The boy wasn't me at all, he was another kid: I was just there. And it wasn't the girl who was black, but him. The mother was real, though. I really had thought she was going to embrace them both and I had dreams about her for years afterwards: that I'd be being born again and she'd be lifting me with that same wounded sorrow or she would suddenly appear out of nowhere, blotting out everything but a single, blazing wing of holiness. Who knows the rest? I can still remember how it felt the old way. How I make my little thrust, how she crushes us against her, how I turn and snarl at the cold circle of faces around us because something's torn in me, some ancient cloak of terror we keep on ourselves because we'll do anything, anything, not to know how silently we knell in the mouth of death and not to obliterate the forgiveness and the lies we offer one another and call innocence. This is innocence. I touch her, we kiss. And this. I'm here or not here. I can't tell. I stab her. I stab her again. I still can't.

/r/ENFP Thread