Hello all, I want to start this poem off with a little introduction because this is the first poem I am publishing on Odyssey. Hopefully it will be the first of many. To begin this collection, I wanted to write a poem that describes who I am as a poet and so, somehow, this poem came out of my head. It's not really what I planned for, but I think it works. Lets just say I'm trying to be more honest with myself.

Also, for all of those reading this on your phone, I urge you to use a computer instead because phones will reformat my poem into lines I didn't plan. If you can't I understand, but it will be better to your eyes on a computer.

Without further ado, this is Poets:

Poets are the most self-centered people that I know.

And I know.

I am a poet.

And the world revolves around me

and my pen.

The one I keep tucked neatly behind my ear as I go walking on hot summer sidewalks

bare feet burning, lips grinning, chin held high into the air,

I’ve found a metaphor.

I stepped on a sharp pebble and it rolled from the ball of my foot to my heel,

it’s left me bleeding,

but it feels a lot like the way it feels to see that couple walking over there

hand in hand on hot summer sidewalks,

feet protected by shoes, lips pulled back with laughter,

chins pointing at each other, eyes stuck on the shadows of one another’s faces

hearts tugging like rope from behind their ribcages,

longing to escape and be with one another,

their bliss feels like my pain,

like a sharp pebble caught under the tender flesh of my wandering foot,

making it bleed teardrops onto the hot summer sidewalk

and I’m going to write about it.

Everything is a metaphor for whatever plagues my heart,

and I will glare at the couple because how dare they

how dare they make me feel the pain of this metaphor.

I am going to write about it,

and I am going to damn their existence to a pebble

because I am a poet

and I do what I want.

Poets are the most self-centered people that I know.

And I know.

I am a poet.

And I am my words,

I am the embodiment of the Oxford English Dictionary,

rearranged and aligned into lines of rhythm and semi-equal length

but sometimes I am free, I have no verse, no rhyme, no beat,

and sometimes my lines are

short

but sometimes they are so long that they stretch from one edge of the paper to the next just to see

what is on the other side.

I can do that because I am a poet

and poetry has no policy!

I make up my own rules.

i can make you whisper...

OR I CAN MAKE YOU SHOUT

I can make you emphasize certain words

Or. I. Can. Make. You. Talk. One. Word. At. A. Time.

Because I am a poet,

and I make the rules.

And all these words?

They are mine.

Mine. All mine.

Every single word you’ve ever read, heard, or said is mine.

And I can use them how I please,

I can make the voice in your mind say what my tongue fails to tell you

because I am a poet

and I do what I want.

Poets are the most self-centered people that I know.

And I know.

I am a poet.

And I am going to tell you exactly how I feel

with long, unnecessary imagery that makes your head spin

but it makes me laugh because I understand exactly what I’m trying to say

but it makes your eyebrows furor, knot together like the two strings

of meaning one and meaning two,

but suddenly my poetry has no meaning,

no, not to you.

But to me it is my life,

these words fill my blood with passion and make my heart roar

from inside its rib-bone cage,

a lion trying to escape the pen the clowns trapped it in at the carnival

so it can eat all the people that point at it and laugh

what meaning is that?

This means that I am a beast that could swallow you whole

but instead I’m just going to drown you in colors that you didn’t know exist,

in the way the sun looks when it sets,

in the way your hand makes my eyelashes flutter when it brushes my fingers.

But you will never know

because my heart is a lion trapped in a cage at the carnival

but poetry is the key

that lets the beast out to play in the dead of the night when all the visitors have all gone away.

Soon that lion will learn to never get back into its cage.

Poets might be the most self-centered people I know,

but they are also the most gentle,

the most sincere,

the most willing to dare go where no man has gone before.

And I know.

I am a poet.

And sometimes I pick up a pen

just to describe the way my frozen toes feel against warm denim quilts.

I use my words to remind myself what cold morning grass feels like

to my back in the springtime when all the snow has finally melted away.

I list off reasons why if the earth stopped rotating

and time stood still at the exact moment I was with you,

I wouldn’t mind standing there for the rest of eternity,

unmoving, hopefully lips pulled back in laughter

and eyes stuck on the shadows of your face.

I’d mean it too.

There are words which I will always keep to myself,

in a little pocket tucked neatly behind my ear as I go walking on hot summer sidewalks

bare feet burning, lips grinning, chin held high into the air,

I don’t need a metaphor.

I just need to remember exactly how it was in the moment my heart screamed “poetry!”

And my mind said, “okay, here.”

That’s what poetry does.

I am a poet

and I am the most self-centered person that I know.

The world revolves around me and my pen,

and my inability to keep it out of my hand.