Blake has written it all and written it
in perfect clarity and beauty
and Baudelaire topped it
with decadence and forbidden pleasures
and  Kerouac took it on the road
and gave it a beat
and Bukowski redefined and simplified
and told all its ugly truths
and got it drunk on beer and women

yet still we sit here poor men and women
and boys and girls
scratching away in our journals
and typing at our refurbished vintage typewriters
and cheap plastic keyboards
attached to overpriced laptops
made of fruit and ego

trying to add to the vast pile of treasure
left behind by Coleridge and Thoreau and Whitman
and Mother Maya Angelou
trying to write ourselves in and out
of the corners of solitude and madness
following in the echos of Plath and Dickinson and Poe

we pickpocket dead myths
and dig up their bones
and dance in the fields of their deaths
and claim their prayers as our own
and play the part of god
as we invent new ways to sin
and feel shame for walking naked
in our own bodies
and daring to enjoy lust
and desire and love

it’s all worthless garbage
and it’s all priceless time well spent
shouting into the void of our meaningless existence
and all the vast emptiness of space takes no notice
no matter who loudly we bash our pans
and pound our fists
and ******* our overinflated sense of self worth

we are helplessly alone
stuffed in overcrowded tin containers
packed tightly in our human misery
willing to sleep with one another
but afraid to look each other in the eye
and see who it really is
we’re sharing our beds with
because we would rather
just imagine it really is love
and not find out if its the truth of love
we’re trying to define
within the fragility of our hearts

we wait till our beds are empty
and our hands are cold
and then we pick up our pens
and strike our keyboards
and lay down lies over the truth
we are afraid to uncover
and we treat it poorly
by doing this again and again

yet it defies us still with its volume and weight
and no matter how many times
are how many ways
we re-write the same poem
over and over and over
the heart stays the same
no matter what color we paint it
red or black or bruised sky blue
what tear lost in the ocean
or ocean trapped in a tear
it remains within the grasp
of the same endless heart beat
coming from the same eternal heart

no matter how many times
a new giant or new lord or new king
or new queen or fool are crowned
and wether they type streams of garbage
or write on leafs inlaid with gold
we will always be connected
by the necessity
of the painful beauty of poetry