i'm not an artist

we do not belong in boxes
and bags and books or
words,
and we do not sit contently
in wordsworth and shakespeare
and blake, burns, and brownings
or in the cold stiff bones
of raleigh's of long ago;

no--

we infect,
detect, and re-select
a virus--a disease,
a germ in every verse and line;
the first signs of
foolish waitings under
bridges and scolding parents
and melodrama
and nothing to signify at all

yet--

we are the blood of nations
and the heart of men
and the love of every
rhetorist and sentimist
to come;
we dance through the ballrooms of
the age and chat with
higher minds
we shake hands with heros
and the homeless, dirty
type that gum over 'hello's

yes--

we are
we are and aren't and will be
silly verse and
clever schemes
naive philosophers and sweet oxymorons
waving hello from the shore;
forever onward and never ending
like the stars in an
ever-cliche sky.