"Who should defend the moon if not the poets?"
Set the fires, let them burn.
The poets are watching,
Hold their gaze, stare them down.

Let them watch you, I vouch on their behalf, they will fall in love.
See how they defend all that their eyes linger upon.
You get to leave, but being forgotten is not your choice.

I wonder if like witches, the poets too were shunned.
Unanimously void of acceptance,
they hear battle cries where conversations are held.

The moon, her shadows. The earth her hollows
The poets go on to fight for all that they love,
I wonder how they reached this particular sparse,
A stretch of once lush but now fading grass.
A sad willow fueled by a writer's insatiable hunger.
Its roots reach deep, and its memories never fade.
The tree sags and groans, and empty nooses swing from where once dead weight hung.

I wonder if invisibility convinced the poets, that to love is to see and
To see is to show. So showmanship became a pre-requisite of their love.
But laced with it is fierce protectiveness of where they belong.
Is that why they're quick to defend another's flaws?
Baring their pens and flexing their claws.
Finding a million reasons to adorn the ones long gone?
They keep draping their dead muses with literary scarves.
In jewels, they bend over backwards to give but never grasp.

Always an Angel, Never a god.
Always the Artist never the art.

I defend the poets, for I was cursed with a poet's heart.
We wear our scars like medals from wars and
We will love till we crumble,
I wish the poets a soft love.
The love that they write and read about.

I wish the poets, a soft love,