Am I a Poet?
Am I a poet?
Do the words that flow in book or on screen
Reflect dramatic emotions that go unseen?
Does my happiness make you smile?
Do you bare your satisfied teeth like a hungry crocodile?
Do my words of suicide hanging in the air like a cloud of despair
Destroy your sanctimonious bliss beyond repair?
Do they have you ringing 999 whilst you panic inconveniently in your chair?
Yeah, I thought so.
Am I a poet?
Are my words like rock salt on a frozen ice rink?
Does my punctation uncontrollably stammer,
is my modest pretense full of glamour?
Do I lift your sorry spirit or make your joyful heart sink?
Just because people smile doesn’t mean they are smiling
and just because they shout the loudest doesn’t mean they can sing.
And the words aren’t always soothing like a triple gin and tonic
They can fucking sting.
But I meant to do that.
Am I a poet?
Do I thrill you? Do I chill you to the arthritic bone?
Do the words paint pictures of terror, images so uncomfortable
That you get off Instagram and shut down your one thousand dollar phone?
Or do you take delight in the fright, in the sight,
In the horror before you, your nightmare Twilight Zone.
You’re a loser, you needed some company, you feel so alone.
You’re a regular sociopath, your friends have all gone.
Do I do that?
Am I a poet?
Do I live with my eyes in the tangerine sky?
With my mind up ahead in a fairytale shed
Do I dwell in the lands of the metaphoric
Reality not living up to the dream as I ask myself why.
As I deal in yarns of happy, happy, happy talky
Where the words paint a picture so far from my life I could cry.
Where I am a crack dealer, but the high is a visible lie
When the words fail to come, then my bullet is up and I tragically die.
A lie, right?
Am I a poet?
Or am I a purveyor of meaningless, nonsense words?
Or a dreamer of attainable dreams, a weaver of worrysome woes
A creator of the highest joys, the lowest, the deadest, the absurd?
Do I bleed enough for you every night on screen?
For my words are my creative, poetic blood.
Each night I slit my wrists again and again
Just for the chance that I might strike gold
That my words might actually be love
That my life might actually
Be inspired from above.
But Am I a Poet?
© Sarah Drury 2019
the starry-eyed mermaid 