THE INSANE POET
The insane poet
Was not insane when he came
Only after years of tortures
His brain abused
His creativity stifled
And worse yet, being laughed at
The temper that is his poetry
Grew in fires of frustration
The body grew fit yet run down by
The constant crushing pressures
Whirling in his mind
The worst kind of interest
The insane poet
Is locked in a coffee warehouse
As trapped as any working class hero
Worrying about bills, waiting to be paid
The insane poet
Writes poems to people he never sees,
Wondering if they’d ask him to sing
(no one has ever asked him to sing,
Only to please stop that singing.)
The insane poet
Would love people to ask him to sing
People who beg and claw to shake
The insane poet’s hand and arm
When they demand to see him
Demand for him to sing
The insane poet
Asks them where they were
When he was locked in a coffee warehouse
Why didn’t they hear him
Screaming to be let out?
The insane poet
Was there, locked in a coffee warehouse
He hollered until he cried, until the pallets
Stacked for rows and rows to the roof, rattled
The insane poet
Screamed until he could speak no more
He whined until his throat dried up
The insane poet
Had no one locked in the coffee warehouse
Who could understand his driving needs
His gut and heartfelt cringing emotions
The insane poet
Slumped against the wall, locked in a coffee warehouse
With no lights or noise or anyone to talk to
The insane poet
Grew insane slowly, a little bit each day
Not so you’d notice, and not until it was too late
The insane poet
Was told by someone with no hair, “You’re crazy,
You’re crazy! Just like everyone else here
Locked in this old smelly coffee warehouse.”
The insane poet
Was the only one among them who could call himself a poet
Yet all the others locked in the coffee warehouse
Just laughed and stared and said, “I can write better than that garbage.”
The insane poet
Blew a hole one day through the back wall of the coffee warehouse
He was locked in for so many years, like a silent prison sentence
And no one’s ever seen the insane poet again.
-- Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.
Adapted from long-lost FROM A WAREHOUSE chapbook.
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