Reserved for the Midnight Poet
There is no opinion quite like my own.
It’s so well thought out; I wear it like a jacket.
I grew it in my garden (I never missed a day of watering).
It became a flower amongst tangled weeds of opposing ideas.
My poetry is my armor. I wear it like an opinion but,
it’s heavier than a jacket. Its weight has more consequence.
To each stanza, I gift a fragment of myself.
Each line is a sleeve on which I can rest my heart.
I can’t dance under the moonlight, but I can write about it.
“Her collarbone became like a mirror, reflecting the stars;
she smeared the Milky-way on her cheekbones like highlighter,”
and, suddenly, there I am: dancer divine, Goddess of the Cosmos.
I am president of my prose, lawmaker for my life’s literature;
I will not be indicted for my insight so long as it is versed.
There is no jail cell reserved for the midnight poet
who steals your affections in broad daylight.
Immortality is not an option; oblivion runs faster than you ever will.
But if I die tomorrow, these words will ensure that my rose colored passion,
my half-finished sentences, and my swallowed remarks live
to see another day. Poetry has captured my very essence.
And when I write about the Evergreen forest,
know that each tree lives within my eyes. Orion’s belt
is spread out upon my face. Every comma, a chip
in my nail polish. Semi-colons are the piercings in my ears.
I do not exist in a universe without space for poetry.
My words are me and I am my words,
unfaltering and steady. Poetry gives me the sky
even when my gaze is cast toward the ground.