What is the job of a poet?

To lie beautifully.

Kind of.

I mean, no one really talks like that.

Do you know how long it takes to get the rhythm right?

Sometimes countless hours,

spent formulating thoughts.

Pushing the dust of fragmented ideas into a mold

consisting of 26 letters.

And then put out into the world with the sincere hope

that the person who reads it will understand the intention

or maybe have something to add

and that idea that was once just gaseous

is in many minds, as a liquid ironclad.

And he sits in a dark room at a desk

going on midnight with work in the morning

trying like hell to create something

working out in his own heart the meaning of his thoughts

using definitions that he knows to shape them into clumps

and

put

them

on

the

screen

for you to see and hopefully enjoy

the way the poem looks and seems and makes you feel

as though you met him through his words.