What They Say About Poets

Poets are sensitive people, they say,

Made out of fire and flowers and untameable ferocity,

raging in a storm of words 

that pours through the cloud and fog of a pen,

ripping through the blankness of paper.

 

Poets are beautiful people, they say,

Gathering the joy and pain of the world in a chamber of their heart, in a lump in their throat.

Alone in crowds, alive in books,

Writing awake and asleep, in the open and in nooks.

 

Poets do not succumb to time, they say,

May it be the little, shaking hand attempting- for the first time- to write more than two lines,

or the wrinkled wrist trembling under the weight of bygone times;

Etching eternity into paper.

 

In the tales of poets they speak of, perhaps it is so

That a poet’s life is a deep chest where poetry is aglow.

For they are weavers of warmth and rawness and joy and woe.

Hush!

“Shhh!” they whisper, sounding

like a gentle breeze.

When the elders talk,

young one don’t speak at ease.

“You do not know,  but we know

all; except the answers to  your innocent, young woe.”

 

“Hush!” they say,

“Hush! Hush!” the say,

You are  girls, you are forbidden to say.

Silence is a trait that must stay.

“Cross your legs and clasp your hands,

And contain your words within your minds.”

 

“Quiet!” they shout, demanding fear.

They raise their voice,

and tighten their face,

Students mustn’t smile, they mustn’t rejoice,

Forbidden are words of disagreement and disgrace.

“Respect” is the word thrown around,

“We’ll shout at you, but you mustn’t hold your justified ground.”

 

“Silence!” they scream,

at the top of their lungs,

Their tongues still in motion after

they have stung

you with the poison of helplessness.

“Respect” is no longer the sun,

around which revolves this hypocrisy.

Now you’ve been told survival’s key:

“YOU MUST OBEY AUTHORITY.”

 

“Shhh!” she whispers,

with the sound of a fellow being,

wiping your tears and subsiding your cries,

“Speak!” she says, holding your hand,

Throwing you in the air, “Fly!” she says,

“I will watch and stand.”

These parchments are yours.

“Write,” she says,

as a lifting of restrictions,

not as a commandment that you must obey.

 

May you discover her within yourself.

And when you retrieve your ability to say,

You will finally be free that day.