The POET


The POET sticks to cities

He breathes himself in
Tosses himself outward and upward
Getting lost in the crowds, endless crowds
Endless names
Endless voices
Endless stories

The POET is art alive

A painter with concrete canvasses
Who paints not with brushes, but fluorescent dragons
A vertical dancer up brick and rebar
Tap shoes? No thank you
Timberlands and Converse work just fine
A musician who reads notes in car alarms
And in foreign shouts
And in a baby’s cries
Bursting forth from a third-story window

The POET is loud, baby

Though he dares not speak at all
For his words are not gone with breath
To be carried and twisted by the breeze
No, he writes his story in stone
Challenged only by historical revisionists
Armed with pressure washers
Which rush to erase him from the city’s Book of Life
Or to paint over him in Eggshell White
Even though the wall is clearly
Country Cream

The POET is oh, so sly

Like a function of nature
He works in silence
A literary buzz-boy bent on
Cultural pollination
A creature apart
A man anonymous
A soul spontaneous
A will victorious

He is the POET