Some say we breathe dust, eat papyrus,

finger leather-bound tomes with gusto.

 

Others say our skin is thin, pale as paper,

our blood thick, dark like ink in a bottle.

 

We drink chamomile when wine runs out

because our desks are too cozy to leave

in favor of going out and interacting and

purchasing things that normal people buy

and living life outside rather than inside

our trippy, unkempt, creative little heads.

 

We brood over grammar, wishing for rain,

toting quills and computers in carpet bags.

 

We mutter to ourselves and scare pigeons,

all the while starving for a chance to share.

 

But that is not how I see us—the authors,

the brave ones who write our own stories,

the masters of scenes and slaves of words,

the chauffeurs of pop culture’s limousines

driving the twisted streets of imagination

and mapping new routes through the mind.

 

Still, some say it’s crazy to suspend real life

so an elf or a mouse or a toaster can thrive.

 

Others sniff at the first whiff of us writers,

asking why we can’t get respectable jobs.

 

Why not go into vacuum sales, fast food,

multilevel marketing, septic tank pumping,

they ask as they eat sandwiches in cubicles,

waiting for raises, despising their bosses,

wishing their dreams didn’t involve reports

and statistics and boredom and pink slips.

 

Why create when you can manufacture

other people’s inventions, plans, ideas?

 

Why make or be a hero, when hero-worship

is easier and far more socially acceptable?