Poetry walks the front of a classroom. Pacing back and forth. The sides and tops of her toes bleeding and sore as she slides her feet from the four-inch black flared heels. Hair pinned up, lips stained red, freckles and moles peering through sagging blueish-black bags. Black chisel tip Expo marker in hand.

On his days off, Poetry wears street clothes, torn-up jeans with paint splatters climbing up their legs. Smeared across words penned upside down, right side up and slithering around and round – creating all new literature. Spray-paint in hand ready to blur the lines between fiction and reality. Masked, cloth pulled low nose and mouth covered. Hair twisted-up and pulled under a black beanie worn through autumnal nights and wintry days. Pulled off and shoved into back pockets upon Vernal equinoxes and under the Midsummer sun’s heat.

Poetry.

                              Like a punch to the gut, tearing at my brain.

Pulling pure anger and grief and hope.

Poem slung across my shoulders like the sky on Atlas’ –

                              Don’t shrug.

Don’t shrug.

DON’T SHRUG.

               Poems spill from their lips, the voices of the damned and the broken, the screams of the elated and love-struck. Flying hard and fast, lyrics launched from lips. Hexes and prayers. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” or winter’s night?

               Poetry, they stand there. Journals in hand, penned with words never spoken and words screamed into mics. Poetry, they stand there. Heart on their sleeve and thoughts tattooed across their wrists and bodies.

Poetry is more than words falling from lips onto pages.

Poetry is screaming in the dark at the anguish you feel.

Poetry is cracking your toes after a long day, splayed out on your bed arms reaching for the ceiling.

A performer beckoning, a priest ministering, a doctor healing.

A comfy hoody with no shirt underneath, dancing in underwear to music pouring from the phone clenched in a fist. Held up to whispering mouths and screaming intentions. That’s Poetry to me. Hands running up to my face, fisting my hair. Poetry is the feel of lips on mine and warm blankets as I fall asleep. Poetry’s arms and whispers reaching for me under covers of darkness and protections warding off any monsters under my bed. Comforting and disturbing, Poetry stirs its cauldron.

               With pitchforks and picket signs held high, Poetry marches on injustice.

Sliding butterfly shaped notes from under closet doors.

Poetry,

Bending heaven and raising hell.

Horned and haloed,

Poetry.

Hold your breath and hold the door as Poetry passes by.

They walk together with Melancholy, Whims, and Twitterpation

marching off join War.

Some chests bound,

               and voices raised.

Faces bleached from night-long Internet conversations

                              And Snapchatted prose.

Trading secrets like conversations whispered in court

               critical and whimsical.

 

Poetry, he taught me a different way to look at the world,

Poetry, she taught me how to speak,

Poetry, the name whispered through earbuds and slipping from lips.