I sat at my computer for ten minutes or more

Hoping a great idea would breeze through the door

Poetry is a gift to man not easy to tame

How could I write something without sounding conceited and lame?

 

My life is a perfectly toasted marshmallow, not an ice cream cone spilled on the floor

Though it does have its occasional downs which leave my heavy heart feeling sore

For the most part however, my life is the same

I’m white, privileged, an “intelligent” dame

The world of poetry could not be a more distant shore

A clique that I refuse to join for the fear of being a bore

 

Not emo, not a thespian, not a math team champ

Not a debater, not a musician, and not a blood-sucking vamp

I’m an average skilled jock with a passion to read

Not a D1-Bound Athlete with a “prescription” for weed

 

Fiction, non-fiction, young adult or the back of a cereal box

Words are to me like a plump chicken is to a greedy fox

They fill my pensive brain to the very very brim

Prompting me to ask questions and to go out on a limb

Why are we here and what does the universe have in store?

Why do some have less and why do some have more?

 

Poetry in particular has always made me wonder

With its fluid interpretations and descriptions of thunder

But if poems are just words on a page, what’s the big deal?

For me their ability to invoke a rainbow of emotions has always been unreal

To be tricked into sadness, lead to shame

Overcome with laughter, made weary of fame

 

When a verse is rich and fills me like a four-course meal

I insist on sharing it, so that others may also reap what I feel

Because poetry is what connects our beings by an invisible thread

It is the roots which keep our wandering souls anchored by the head

 

Prose is the most sacred tradition known to us of the human kind

Which may be why I am hesitant to open up my mind

My lines do not require very much mental cognition

I fear that I am not a poet worthy of exhibition

So until my words mature with the passage of time

I am just a jock who tries to write poetry with rhyme