No, I could not have been a poet yesterday
Because my grandfather was not at Dachau
And the other was not descended from an emancipated man
No, I am not a poet today
Because "she" does not apply to me
I do not struggle with all of the male paradigms
Nor was my gender role
Chosen for me by doctors in consultation with my parents
Maybe I can be a poet tomorrow
It might be possible...
If I claim to be one of the last surviving cowboys
Alienated by urban prairies, sleeping under fluorescent skies
Cussing up a storm about the chaffing qualities of chaps and toil
Versing how I was never meant to survive as a wrangler
Being ivory among ecru
I might even reminisce about the good 'ol days
When my grandmother would take me shopping
(if I sat still and behaved while she was getting her latest tattoo and waxing)
So I wouldn't have to wear last year's boots
While bringing in a herd of wild vegans.

Merrily

I woke under a willow tree
And lived and cried and wrote and died
Awoke the willow from its rest
To see me sleeping in its breast
But nodded off again to nap
And thought me no more than a dream

What majesty can one imagine
To have on arm
A queen who is not a queen
Deprived of her own rule
Unable to gather her allure
A savage goddess domesticated
What might can one esteem
To have in tow
A king who is not a king
Declawed, defanged, muted
Diagnosed with self-inflicted tragedy
A nobility deemed criminal
Take my arm savage queen
And I will bare my fangs
Rend from the wound
A vision of your irresistible nature
I will roar from my core
And the deep chambers of the earth
Shall echo to the continents
The union of a queen
And her jungle king.

They mock me, the witches
They were to be my salvation,
But I am a varmint to them
Only meant to watch
As they prepare to go out
Speaking the language of social evils
It blots, it contrasts, it's a conspiracy
Like cold criminality gripped as
Iron at their breasts.
What good is rage
Or silted love
When nature
Is not natural to nature?
I am flawed and astounded
At the daisy's humble hailing
Panged it is an honest blackened howl.
It changes me
And my heart wails to the howl of the daisy
Like a soul dying in moonlight.

The world needs me

Or so I am told

I need only to connect

With my community

I hear my community

Scurrying around in the attic

The squirrels, mice, bats

Battering around in the upper reaches

Where I dare not open the door

And explore

The world

Calling its needs to me

In its native tongue

A tongue not taught

Tempting an embrace

Trembling,

I dare not.

Her wing grazed my shoulder
Be-knighting me champion to a queen
And pearled the fading dusk
With unconscious syllables
Wrapped in gilded smiles.

I caught a fish in today's brisk mist
I just reached in that scalely blue and hooked it.
It sang a baritone song of the void to me in a Gershwin style
Breathing into my gills and nautilus nostrils tangy weed and coral florals
I felt the salt of a star filled sea sanding my toes
Before drifting into dreams of
Sea ponies and whiskey maids.

Darkness crawled along the ground
As deep as fear, a stalking doom,
When lit the flame desire found
To christen you, a shadow's bloom.