All These Poets

if Shakespeare had written you, you'd be Juliet 

   with fair features and soft hands, 

this whole world would love you like their own 

Maya Angelou could write you stronger 

   she'd pick you up and set you free 

you've always been a caged bird, and caged birds need to sing

Edgar Allen Poe would write you darker

  he'd give you pale hands and veins so dark they'd be rivers 

   he'd make you a Dream Within a Dream; with blue eyes deeper than his City in the Sea 

if Walt Whitman had written you, you'd be green 

   green with envy, green, like the Leaves of Grass in the sun

   your heart would beat Drum-Taps and your very flesh would be a poem 

Robert Browning would have written you with a whisper of confession 

   he would have written you with love, hope, fear, faith

  you would have been his humanity 

if Natalie Diaz wrote you she'd probably make you wild 

  she'd write you, babydoll eyes and bubble gum cheeks

  you'd be her journal of metaphors and her box of hyperboles

 Robert Frost would have made you burning 

   you'd be fire dipped gold and ice covered isolation 

  a beautiful mix of rock, water, bone

and everything else a mountain is made of 

but you wrote yourself hidden 

   buried yourself in the constellations and drowned yourself in grey moon reflections 

   you wrote yourself simply, when all these poets I've ever studied would have made you a masterpiece