Only We

Only we poets are brave enough To appear utterly bare before one another, Wearing just our prejudices, our obsessions The vanishing epiphanies of the hour; trials of the day Disheveled, reeling drunk on what we're trying to say: Our own individual truth wrung out of the day's dollar, or the day's scarcity. Tongue-tied in our despair to say it perfectly Hedging all on the compassionate intuition of our peers- Other authors, who are much the same deep down, Feeling things together, as if poised inside one being; One omnipotent beating heart, vibrating the worlds fragile equanimity. Maybe I might have passed through life never suspecting this But I know there is a potential power Which lives inside words, because things have changed for me In subtle ways I could not have foreseen: I was finally able to admit those parts of me Which I considered unfit for human consumption Or else too abstract to put down on paper- To dredge, lever them upwards; The good, the bad, the heretical, the complacent; All the unbridled creatures I had set a lock upon, and tried to forget And instead of being frightened away, you came closer To see what lay behind, what was opening up inside- Even if you should have been running any other direction instead- Now that is a true friend, as true as you may ever find, Anywhere you ever go.