april fool

what makes me a poet…

who gets to define themselves this way.

The words I choose

to use

and abuse

and reuse

and toss about onto paper with

reckless, deliberate

abandon…

this action, these words,

this process

makes me not a poet

or even a writer

I’m still a man

a desperate,

needy fellow

who probably gets such a charge

from hearing himself

barf syllables all over the place

that he fails to understand

how he is pigeonholing

himself

into a tag,

a description,

a reputation.

Clearly…

or not so much…

probably the defining factor in

my becoming a balladist

is hardly honorable,

or respectable

or couth.

I do it for the chicks.

Always have.

That and my amazingly low threshold

for immediate gratification

(any idea how long it takes to write a novel?!)

poetry rewards the bard

quickly,

rapidly…

the payoff is immediate

and the reciprocal…

the readers reaction

can be even faster depending on the mood

and the day

not to mention that

chicks.dig.poetry.

even more than that

none of them will care that I admit it

in writing

in this poem

because they will find my honesty

strangely erotic

and my shallowness will

toss me into the category of

the other bad boys with

hogs,

or tats

or nipple rings.

See the power of the written verse?

The choir boy,

the balladeer,

sonnetist,

versifier,

they all become one with

the man…

the bad boy…

the dreamer,

the asshole

and the poem,

it never sheds a tear.