Unalive Poets

From my upcoming book "Imaginary Friends"

Photo by Annika Phoenix

I’ve been called precocious, imaginative
someone who has a way with words
and I’ll shine briefly on stage somewhere
confidently nervous but I believe
in every fucking word I say
scribbling down thoughts on scraps
before they’re gone forever
I don’t have it in me to go viral
spiral into the fame baptized by the Internet
getting high on likes and reposts
and laughing over a comment about how
I’m fat and gay and some sort of way
that causes disagreement but it isn’t anything
I said, maybe
I wonder what life would mean 
if I were famous for this thing I can’t seem
to stop doing even though
I’m not all that popular
I study the great minds of generations
and feel divinity from the words of poets
who seem to understand things differently
but who seem to shrink away from fame
and suddenly mortality walks into the room
and their voice is silent save for the echo
of the words they left behind
and I wonder how many times they were called
precocious, imaginative
“oh that’s nice” floating off into the wind
while they’re standing there wondering why
no one heard anything else
Poets seem to be the topic of discussion
a lot more after they die
praising the brilliance while ignoring
the pain of being alive and feeling things
at quadruple the intensity
I’m not sure if all poets are mad as hell
or if our brains are wired with too much
to exist as normals in polite society
until the weight of the universe compels us
to artistically complain
And then the curtain call snaps the masses
into rapt attention and suddenly
it’s the topic of conversation
while people pretend they gave 
a single, solitary fuck when they were alive
The thing is, I know people care
they’ve gotten past precocious, imaginative
and while the commentary is inconsistent
and I can’t predict at all what resonates
I live for those blips of unity and understanding
even though they are hard to hear
Maybe I’m just depressed because 
death is all I seem to hear about these days
but the algorithm likes it
and so we spiral on the scroll wheel
until something kicks us into consciousness
and we feel…something
the humanity returning to our blood 
it isn’t a flood of dopamine but a trickle
of truth wrapped up in words 
spun by people who want to hear
how they make you feel while they’re alive