[Poem] Find Me

2009-05-25 @ 8:16 p.m.

i often think:
it must be a myth
that poets
live alone.

poetry is movement and emotion;
poetry is experience had and not had.
poetry is lived through and lived for
and will be lived.
what is poetry without love?

the mathematics break it down:
love is life
and if poetry is life then poetry is love.

yet when you deconstruct the melancholy
verses of some of the greats
it seems
that their poetry
is a love of a different kind,
between man or woman
and word,
a torrid affair with loneliness
that will only end
in heartbreak.

perhaps muses are shy and do not like
to visit men who have women
or women who have men --
muses,
afraid to show their faces,
hide behind paper fans.

or perhaps muses are vicious,
jealous,
and crave a poet's full attention
and nothing less --
but they ask for nothing more.

perhaps poetry
is always sad.
perhaps
it is always lonely, too.

perhaps poetry is born
of the long death that is loneliness,
born to bring life
into something lifeless.
poetry is conceived not from love
between the poet and someone human.

poetry is the almost-bastard child
of a dreamer on fire
and a muse.

maybe poetry has nothing at all to do
with love
and everything
to do with existing
in a cocoon of dreams
and sweet caresses.