On Poets Gone

A poet is a thief of thought,

Who, rogue ship at nightfall, sought,

And boarded, to pass the seas of time.

With a cloak of obscurity he veils himself,

And comes from afar,

From an hundred, a thousand, a ten-thousand miles,

To the front stoop of the front door,

And waits.

Quitless.

Quiet.

A bereaved demon,

In a knocked-up,

Scraped-up,

Stopped-up dust jacket,

He stays,

Till the door is opened,

And he leaps from the page,

A hooded figure,

Handed with sword and dagger and,

The reader,

The ignorant, innocent reader,

Unwary of what was released.

He tries to look away, but,

Like the sun, the poet stays,

To bright to see,

To light to look away.

And with each line,

Each lash from the poet’s dying pen,

More intriguing,

More satisfying than the last.

The cocaine of clarity,

Of knowledge, of wisdom, of purpose,

Of being, taunts,

The reader, luring,

Closer, closer to,

The tip of the the poet's last word.

A poet is a killer who kills and is guilty.

Though he does not care for courtrooms,

Or wigs, or peers, much.

Besides,

Who could hang a dead man anyway?

Who would chain his words,

Or noose his pen.

Shoot his papers?

That’s just folly.

But still he kills while he is dead.

Time never quiets what he said.