Why Poems

I write because I can't help myself,

certainly not for something to eat:

poets don't sell poems on the street.

I traded plumbing work for food...

plumber/poet being as oxymoronic

as I could live.  Many poets don't make

it out of their families alive; thriving in

a nest of convoluted over intelligence

of intellect makes the sensitive, arty

types run from the corral screaming

for air, like flowers for sun. Many don't

make it and are unknown, refused by

fellow humans 'til they become human 

refuse, dying with an armed needle on

a lonely, sheet less mattress to dissolve.

Political poets write with a bulls eye on

their back: few people are really ready

to hear the truth...even if it's just about

beauty and love, not war and hate...

"Can't have no commies, hippies, free

lovers and thinkers on our blockheads.

It's a conspiracy against fluoridation."

Lorca's being taken out and shot was

a clear signal that trying to escape from

the primitive brain would not be tolerated,

and never has been by straight arrow

lying, cheating criminals we elect, or,

simply seize power because they can.

But, poets, or, poetry has always been

transcendent of reason based on fear.

Poetry is the unknown known and shown,

which makes it so hard, so shocking, so

unnerving, so inciting, so ecstatic, so

chaotic, so confusing, so magnetic, so

soul thirst quenching to read. It's why we

remember songs and poems; because 

words and or sounds grip us by the roots

of our beings and won't ever, ever let us

let go of being human.