The Poet

A poet wears no badge,

nor hat with "literate"

scrawled across it,

nor x-ray glasses with which

to examine all inequities

in every passerby passing by

A poet wears a mask,

long sleeves cover up

heart tattoos along their arms,

crossed out names of

ex-lovers weigh on their back

But the poet is only half

of the person,

deformed,

chest cavity agape,

ribs twisted outward

with a black hole in the center

The other half of the person

sits before them on a page,

the porcelain form of

what was once sacred,

now covered in ink,

cracked, broken, wasted

The poet is a cartographer,

mapping every curve, tip and edge

of the shards on the table,

then puts them back together

with a self-help hot glue gun

And when the cracks are sealed

and the black hole filled

the mask slides off

and the sleeves roll up

Eventually another will run fingers along

the cracks in the porcelain, the small and the long

they'll tattoo their name on the poet's right shoulder

and tell them to "Catch," right after "It's over"

The mask goes back on as the heart hits the ground

and the glue comes apart as the sleeves roll back down

another name crossed, another burden to bear,

another who could not treat porcelain with care