I was a Poet.
I would swim the streets at Night,
scavenging for Treasure
in those places Most Low which most often called Home,
reaching Fullness Of Enrichment only after I had exchanged all that I had to give.
But, however Noble it may sound, there were no true Vows of Poverty or Chastity taken-
but only the feigned Destitution of a Creature for whom everything was always rich & fully satiating.
For I was a Poet, one of an elite classification of species,
whose sole utility was to speak for for those whom couldn't adequately speak for and by themselves,
Yet in order that we could truly become enabled & ennobled for this Metaphysical feat,
we had to sacrifice ourselves willingly and oft willfully before the Shrine of The Flood-
the Flood of all human highs & lows-The Experience, raw & uncensored, unashamed & unafraid.
In essence, we poets were interpretors of The Wind & The Rain,
keepers of the elusive yet essential,
the soothsayers of oral mediums through which the cryptic codes of the Intangible
could be evenly & justly deciphered.
Although, I, as a Poet was more often than not misunderstood, and even feared & loathed-
cursed in a word-by words-and the Truths which my Works revealed to the Human Heart.
For despite all of our attempts to declare our Citizenship with the World,
we knew we would never fit & would always be few & far between.
Yet, by our nature we were Solitary animals & this alienation did not hinder us in our quest, nonetheless.
We were native & adaptable to Any & All an Inner Landscape or Climate,
however Alone we were in our expansiveness of Mind & Heart.
The Poet is oft romanticized & exalted, yet is also equally Demonized, Pathologized & shunned.
The Poet is all, must become all-thus is the Poet perceived often as a kind of High Priest,
or even a God or a demi-god, crowned in the glory & subtly forging
Omnipotence & Omniscience of The Idea, The Platonian Utopia of Mindstuff as Matter.
As Poet I was:
Muse
Mother
Father
Sister
Brother
Healer
Devil
Demon
God
Archangel
Priest
Priestess
Warrior
Temptress
Martyr
and even Castaway.
And the words which often came to me in the Night,
would greet their beatification
upon entrance into the Temples of both Spirit and Flesh,
all Angels & Demons roused into Dynamism each according to their Intent & my delivery of them,
into countless swooning & hungry human hearts-
hearts hungry for that certain special kind of Hunger, enflamed only by a certain kind of Catalyst.
And often, for those much more renowned of my fellow wordsmiths,
their zealous idolators, teeming with such staunch Idealistic Rage & Fervour,
would often shout these Poet's legacies from dormitory rooftops
or any and all Institutions of Enlightenment & Bohemia everywhere.
And for this purpose only was and is the Poet willing to undergo
all forms of extremity-even depravity-to attain their ends.
For through our words, life can be brought to either epiphanous revivification
or morbid diathesis each and every time one of our works was, or is heard or even silently read.
And perhaps it is also for this reason that we, the Poets,
must spend only the first quarter of our lives as Poets.
For we cannot be both human and a Poet-this goes against our good conscience.
For all throughout history, so many great Poets met their early demise trying to accomplish this.
For though the Poet is hired to best speak for Humanity, we can never fully be, only Human.
Thus, it came to be that eventually, my words, upon their dispersing out into the Atmosphere,
would merely evanesce, and so one cool night, I took my last verbose breath.
I knew that it was time.
It was time to save myself from the eventual Damnation of Exaltation,
from the continual cycle of Extremes which only the somewhat still young of mind can survive.
Yes, it was time to pass on my Legacy to someone else-
someone preferably, I thought to myself, whom perhaps has discovered the Gift for that Ultimate Art-
even exalted above wordsmithing itself-
and even exalted above the art of learning how to not only die as a Poet, but how to live as one.
But perhaps even more importantly, the next in line of poetic licensure and legacy
could finally hone that much coveted yet elusive of all refineries:
The Art Of Being Human.
