The Poet As Noun, by PD lyons

Poet as Noun

he did not know what else to do

so he wrote

he did not think of it

he did not believe it to be divine

he was afraid of everything else

so he did this one thing

not that he didn’t do other things

but they were all varying responses to fear

attempts to over come

deny

hide from

himself and others

like the first one to do acid

like the first one to not cut his hair

like the first one to get married have a kid get divorced

get arrested go to jail

leave town leave the country

all the while knowing the falseness of bravado

he did not know what else to do

so he wrote

no matter how high

how angry

how lonely enough to believe that god did in fact exist and had abandoned him

no matter how much sex

how many lovers

how many miles

how many broken torn up hearts including his own

he did this one thing

and because of this he never needed anyone to tell him who was

yeah they could call him whatever

bastard

mother fucker heartless bastard

just a kid

a kid in love

a bleeding heart

ignorant liberal

beautiful lover

hackney painter

failed husband

a traveler of foreign lands

a lover a husband a loving husband a loving father

an outlaw of love a dealer of drugs a rider of fast horses across broken unknown terrain

selfish, grifter,

all these were changeable all these mere adjectives

temporary partial descriptions,

the noun he had always been

because he did this one thing

and then one day he stopped

1974 crosby