There is a host of different men
populating this blue earth;
like piglets in a barbèd pen,
we share both our death and our birth.

Some are merely pallid ghosts
of what they once aspired to be
boarding boats on craggy coasts,
then sailing to eternity.

Some are statues carved in ice:
beauties 'til their time runs out.
Frigid, cold, they pay the price
when comes along a cruel drought.

But we - the poets - are different still.
We arm ourselves with brutal pens,
and from the crib are taught to ****:
a blank page is a thing to cleanse
with words that swarm in like a flood
with words like trails of crimson blood.

However we are oft the same
and with the years are taught a name
so that at length we all turn tame
and somewhat quench the inner Flame.

We are the captains of our lives:
Stranded ghosts in mausoleums,
Artifacts in cold museums,
Killers in a coliseum.