By Nikki Giovanni poetry is motion graceful as a fawn gentle as a teardrop strong like the eye finding peace in a crowded room we poets tend to think our words are golden though emotion speaks too loudly to be defined by silence sometimes after midnight or just before the dawn we sit typewriter in hand pulling loneliness around us forgetting our lovers or children who are sleeping ignoring the weary wariness of our own logic to compsoe a poem no one understands it it never says "love me" for poets are beyond love it never says "accept me" for poems seke not acceptance but controversy it only says "i am" and therefore i concede that you are too a poem is pure energy horizontally contained between the mind of the poet and the ear of the reader if it does not sing discard the ear for poetry is song if it does not deligh discard the heart for poetry is joy if it does not inform then close off the brain for it is dead if it cannot heed the insistent message that life is precious which is all we poets wrapped in our loneliness are trying to say