We wrap ourselves in arrogant cloaks
of self serving florid words,
to shield us from our inability,
or perhaps it is unwillingness
to take action, and change the world
that we document, and moan about,
and on occasion glorify.
Is their anything more selfish
than slicing open your own history
and spilling it out for everyone to see,
and hoping for sympathy, empathy, or praise.
We who have been granted brushes of language
and a palette of poetic devices,
red metaphors, blue rhymes and yellow simile,
seldom paint anything that changes the world for the better.
Instead we paint by numbers,
the themes that have been exhausted
since before the first lampblack and gum stroke
on the first leaf of papyrus.
We hide, we hide from the horrors
behind our carefully crafted walls,
formed of subjects, and verbs mortared with clauses.
And we think we deserve even a droplet of the praise,
one leaf of the laurel, that has been placed on our heads,
because, when the emotion bubbles over,
and we cannot contain it any longer
we chuck a few verses over the wall,
shouting leave me out of it.
Sitting in our special little circles
we stroke each other, and hope that when we need it,
someone will stroke us back.
Yet, those who have the courage to step out
into the storm outside, the storm from which we hide,
fight and fall, and suffer all, while we pull our cloaks tighter
and compliment each other on how clever we are.
There is beauty, and nobility
and perhaps even divinity in poetry,
but it is a tragedy that most poets are cowards.