We are neither your mouthpieces nor your bully pulpit

Even though you preach the gospel of your own pedigree.

We are not lost sheep in the wilderness of rogue words

Any more than we are unformed dough in your kneady hands

Requiring the stricture of forms or unbroken commandments.

Our work emerges from places that you have never seen

Its ineffable sense made of words never before heard

Its rhythms arriving on shattering earthquakes and dissipating clouds

That are lost to us except in the fleeting instant that they arrive—

And if interrupted by imperious checks are forfeited to stasis.