Courage to Join the Club
Reading poems
makes me want to
write my own.
Writing them
makes me want to
read from more poets.
It’s a self-sustaining
cycle that could easily
consume me.
I know this because
I’ve let it loose in me
from time to time.
Beautiful timeless verses
of Audre Lorde in
A Litany for Survival;
The insightful, hopeful
message from Alice Walker imparted by
The Same as Gold.
They, the poets and their verses,
inspire in me this intense
longing to share
in their artists’ collective
with my own verses like Broke.
Still, I hesitate.
Through years of exploring poets
contemporary and long dead
I’ve vacillated between
wanting to participate
and keeping hid the way I can fall far short.
Hiding
wins often
until my verses shout to me
demanding to be shared,
and here is one place I let them out.
These words that demand the chance
to have an audience
don’t ask for or require
safety. So I make the effort
to meet their bravery
and stand by them and listen
to what any might want to say
mostly because I have no choice.
