Do poets adopt the art of words
naturally, or is it an act
of desperation, speaking
from subterranean spaces
to exhume our suppressed voices,
to find a silent corridor
where our defiance finds sound?

And if we speak, do others listen,
or is it merely an act of resistance,
this conversation within ourselves?
We awaken as others sleep
stacking words, restoring trust
in the unoccupied zones of us.

By dawn, we smile behind
a scaffold of eyes and nodding hands,
comply with the day's demands
anticipating nightfall

when, once again,

we release them-
the destitute, the vagrants
of our exiled selves,
who take refuge in tent cities
built of verse to weather, together,
the long cold nights ahead.