He shouldn’t write but for himself;
he should reach onto his mental shelf,
select a thought and build it wings,
a body, beak, and flighty things
and let it sing for him.
But he will try to make it sound
profound and full of philanthropic urgings
(you have heard these poems that prick the soul)
and point it down a path where it
had never thought to go, perhaps
it never ought to go if ill-equipped.
And so he tries to justify the fight between
the human right to love himself
and the wrong to please the world.
