Us The Poets Us

In language, I proclaim myself,
er, um, differently. Color of eyes:
Mercury. Hair: Dry winter hills
laced with concrete highways.
Favorite song: A Train Whistle
Made My Bedroom Curtains Cry.
Only obstruction to all my lies:
some day, honest, I, too, will die.
Spent this life proclaiming
in language,atmosphere of action;
poetry, final words before space--
a far wider expanse of us,
5 generations later us,
this one planet only us,
us inescapable from us,
us the only lobbyists for peace us,
us begging food, then water,
us who’ll put a stop to us,
mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles,
us isolated by love of us,
us unharmed by us,
us who believe in us.
At the outer reaches, atmospheric edge,
there is a poem, how governments renege,
how the ancient feuding tribes--nostalgic
for violence, uncreative from hard distraction--
refuse leadership at the cost of their children,
how all the rich first ripped out their eyes,
how action is small but, some of us breathe
possibility and bold proclamations that, yes,
it can be done! 5 miles above our earth, over
the soil of what we do, cut the poets open.
See how they work. They breathed there first!
“Extravagantly different sort of us,” a poet
once proclaimed, where words serve as air.
“Still, we find it hard to breathe, troubled
from the profane ease of simply saying it.”