by the time you think you're a poet
you've huddled with your sacred cows
and piddled your father's fortune away
and then you think you can rhyme yourself
into oblivion with nothing but a pocketful
of verse

you've a prisoner of your own volition and the
sun is a freckle on your back, you've become
your own slave trader and you've begun to trade
your ghosts for simple but honest affection, one
that doesn't lie with ambidextrous hands, silent
and ignoble like the masses who sing the morning
like a doleful hymn, who rise with temptation
and sleep with alienation.

there's just too many of us and not enough of them,
poets line the streets with blind hands and walk
through walls with sewn lips.

poets stink to high heaven and rise to all occasions
basking in the afterlife like otters on their backs,
drifting with a stone to break open their clams,
catching the sun
with smiling whiskers.