If you do not feel anything

When your fingers touch a keyboard

 

You are not a poet

 

If there is not the slightest rhythm

From the syllables stampeding

In a Socratic circle

Every time you press a key

Creating the time signature

For the story you plan to tell

 

You are not a poet

 

If there is the off chance

That you can look at a sunset

And not feel the

Tantalizing, teasing, pulse-freezing

Movement

To use every adjective known to man,

And then some you made up

On the spot because

It was just that beautiful,

To document the scene

Placed before you

By the will of Fate

And a God with a paintbrush or

Perhaps,

Maybe just too many glasses

Of wine

For He or She to still be dancing

Across the afternoon sky,

So They lay on the horizon

Until the engine of a businessman

On his way to work

Brings in the new day

 

You are not a poet

 

If you watch the news

And hear a story about

A young, black man being murdered in

A dimly lit stairwell

On his way home with his family

Or about a young female

In the Middle East being shot

For wanting an education

Or about how a Columbian woman

Has been raped in her own dorm room

And ignored by campus authority

And your immediate response was

“That’s terrible!”

“Oh! What a world we live in today!”

Or my personal favorite:

“I hope they’re okay”

 

You are not a poet

 

Because a poet,

A master of tongue

Would reach for their pen

Like it was Excalibur

With ink’s bane pumping through

Its radical barrel

Knowledgeable of its lethal use

 

Capable of summoning the power of Enheduanna

And Angelou

And Hughes, Frost, Baraka

And the army of lyricists to follow

And ride the wave of emotion,

Attacking each and every thought

With every precise scanning of a stanza

Stabbing into the minds of millions

Who dared to listen with open ears

 

A poet would do something about it

 

And at the end of the day

When their pen runs dry of toxin

They’ll still smell the blood red roses

And the blue hued violets

And wonder why

You dare try it