Mama Told Me Not To Fall In Love With A Poet (National Poetry Day offering)

Mama told me not to fall in love with a poet.

Because, a poet cannot love you back.

She told me, next time you see her draw her close and listen for a heartbeat.

All you hear is the cacophony of quills dipping and drowning in ink.

Son, you cannot hope to compete with the fact that

Poets are betrothed only to rhythmic prose
Hearts forever buried like vampyric souls.

Destined to a martyr's end, prophesied by the scratches of 1000 pens,

Writing and reciting their souls into rolled up pages, microphones and bloody stages;

The love of a poet: dear son, is ethereal like incense -
bound up too tightly in head wraps, leather journals and fingers snaps.

A poet is Van Gogh reborn - maniacally painting the discourse of pathos

-and you My Dear are no more than a castrated ear.

A poet is Salome: Her dance is to your death, and not even Jesus can save you...

A poet is Delilah: you think it safe in her arms while your head is being shorn

A poet is Medusa: whose pretty words issue from the mouths of snakes in poisonous rhymes

 leaving ears and eyes stoned and mesmerized

Son, if you want to know what love of a poet looks like: 

Look at the way a dyslexic with autism writes.

A poet will feed on your love like a leech and bleed you out thru her fingers into pools of cardinal ink,

Writing your secrets out for the world to read in skin-bound volumes.

Now, I listened intent to my mother's dissuasion

but of course stubborn sons hardly take heed to what their mamas say -

And so, I went and fell in love with a poet anyway.

And was soon struck dead just like the oracle said

She stung me like the scorpion does the frog

Burned me in the same way that lava did to Pompeii

And when I finally rose,

A phoenix with ashes falling off of my shoulders

I heard again clearly the voices of my mother asking me

Now dear son will you not finally see?

A poet does not and cannot be held by hearts or by hands

They are too busy trying to capture the rhythm that mountains and trees already dance to

All they know is psychosis and loneliness which puts a ring on their finger and the choker around their neck

Desperate to learn but never getting to speak the language of birds

So Dear son, promise me again, to never fall in love with a poet but

Instead, fall in love with the words

But mother, I protested -
How can you relegate me to a ronin, husbanded to solitude?

How am I to follow this cautionary advice coming from you?

You've cursed me and left me with nothing about love to do-

How is it that you fail to forget-

Your son..

Is a poet too?