Secret Lives of Poets

I’ve often wondered, you know
what they are really like
these elusive, reclusive versifiers

Too bad I can’t fire up the remote
go to the poetry channel
then watch the all telling documentary

So, I guess I’ll simply have to wonder
about the veiled rites and rituals
behind their literary enchantment

Do poets travel alone like noble, solitary bards
or gather in flocks, herds, or prides
and it’s covertly called “a reading of poets”

When it comes to mating is it
iambic pentameter foreplay
tickling punctuation
drawn      out      spacing
lingering

licentious

line breaks

Then
crescendoing twitch and stutter
sputtering ink
sheets of wet, dripping parchment
feathering to the floor
in a heaving pile of

sighs

While rearing their young
do they begin nursing them on
Shelley, Keats, and Bryon
then shift to more erudite delights
Hoagland, Collins, and Bukowski
when they’re old enough
for more solid things to chew on

Behind their gifted poeting
do they sit on Tuscan terraces
gaze upon clear Italian pools of reflection
sipping hot licorice tea
peering at the world
through forever
kaleidoscopic spectacles

You might ask what prompts
such wild poetic imagings
all I can say for certain is

when adrift in their verses
I tingle from deep within
as their souls brush mine

But sadly, I fear their reality is much, much
more prosaic
littered and mired with real jobs, bills, doubts,
and neuroses
just like me