Those that say writing is for those avoiding life,
have never seen the way my pen
dances across it's stage.
They've never seen the way words can
wrap themselves about you,
settle in your bones,
nap in your empty places, guarding your secrets.
They don't know how it feels
to squirm under the relevance of a poet's
transcending prophecies.
They don't know the subconscious way we bite our lips
when e.e. cummings whispers
oceantides.
Or how we sigh, starry-eyed
when T.S. Eliot feeds our fantasies with dreams
of places and things we can't find in our backyards.
They can't possibly understand
the relief of understanding,
when Sylvia Plath eviscerates herself into our thirsty
mouths, spilling her soul onto skinsoft pages.
Maybe, then
poets are not so alive after all,
human sacrifices to their own mortal experience.