Poets are crazy!

They attempt to reach past the  thin veil of reality

and touch with their pencils that core of beauty

that is the essence of everything;

they always fail

yet they try again and again,

like a moth in its efforts to reach the flame.

 

Upon an ocean of facts,

amid waves of impossibilities, they float

imprisoned inside transparent bubbles of dreams.

 

And it’s so hard for poets to make it among sane people,

’cause they’re always wondering

while everyone else is satisfied;

always frightened while others feel secure.

And the only scars they have to show for the wounds

that cause them so much pain

are their poems.

 

Poets are always laughing while others cry,

and crying as others laugh,

and each poem that causes them to die is a breath of life;

each breath of life kills them.

 

Poets know no language they can call upon

to make what they feel understood,

yet people call them great and immortalize them

for their inability to communicate.

 

All poets are crazy,

’cause they know that if they achieve any success in this world,

they fail to accomplish anything.

And every time someone says to them,

“I understood that poem,”  they think to themselves,

“How could you have understood that poem?

It wasn’t written for you to understand IT,

but yourself.

Then you would know how much I love you,

though we’ve never met before this.

And that would make you cry for me as I bleed for you.

For only in a mixture of my blood and your tears

can there ever be found understanding.”

So that makes poets crazy people,

who step on broken glass to keep from walking on the flowers,

in their efforts to find something that will fill them

as it empties them.