Poetry Friday -- Voodoo Doll

This poem is not unlike a voodoo doll.
See how I seek the form: I croon and coo
caressingly to it, to you. I call
it by your name. I think it looks like you.

How do you like your likeness? Is it apt?
Not flattering, unfair perhaps a hint
of malice in the lines? I have you trapped
at last: in ink, perhaps someday in print.

I knead my memories of you into the page --
such memories I have of you, my friend! --
long-simmered in my helplessness and rage,
which until now I lacked the means to end.

No matter where you go, you'll feel the twinge,
the pinch, the bite, the burn of my revenge.

---
From sometime in the late 70s. I'd been reading Sylvia Plath again, and was trying to get some of her fury into my own work. But it wasn't completely sincere -- more trying on the anger, to see if saying these things would let me know that I felt them. I found I didn't, and the poem ends up being hollow because of it. Still, I think it turned out well technically, and maybe some other person might find that it expressed his or her feelings more than it expressed mine.