Assuming you don’t write your own,
whose poetry assumes your voice
and would, with no small arrogance,
usurp the words that form your world?
Assuming that you do not play,
whose music fills your waiting ears
and would displace the silence there
with its own song and not your own?
Assuming that you do not dance,
whose rhythm would inform your bones
and chart your course across the stage,
its curtain drawn upon your birth?
Assuming that you’d dedicate
your years to some creative spark
should it make obvious itself
and fill with purpose your short life,
what makes you think it cares to wait
while you stand silent in the wings,
content to sing another’s song,
wasting your breath on other’s words,
or learning some odd stranger’s dance?
What good is that to a small spark
that seeks a kindling dried and gnarled,
not soaked through with another’s sweat.
Assuming you are not your own,
whose god have you imagined yours,
that will appear somehow at length
to give you what you do not seek?
27 NOV 2006
