what is a poet?

what is a poet?
a question the soil understands
more than the scholar.
an animal shot in the heart
still trying to sing
with the last air in their lungs.
a beast who learned
that if you bleed just right,
the crowd will call it art
instead of agony.
a nervous system
still shaking from a childhood
nobody apologized for.
a bloodstream that learned
how to translate sorrow
into syllables.

the poet is the exposed nerve of the species.
a living fault line.
a heart murmur
in the body of the collective,
the echo of something sacred
trying not to forget itself
in a world addicted to
anesthesia.

poets are bad at small talk.
we have rivers behind our ribs
that don’t know how to stay in their banks.
you ask “how’s your day?”
and i’m already tasting the salt
of my ancestors in the back of my throat.
wondering how much of them still live
inside my tears.

they say we are mostly water.
then why do i feel like smoke?

my poetry isn’t written.
it’s a blood clot that broke loose.
the pulse behind my panic attacks.
my lymph nodes begging to drain.
my wounds that won’t close.
my gut remembering
the moment my mother
called me possessed by a demon
and my intestines never forgetting
what that did to my digestion.
a man with no family
trying to teach his son
what love sounds like.
trying to hold him with arms
that were taught to let go.
a compost pile,
turning what almost killed me
into something that feeds.

you call it a poem.
i call it the sound
of my ribs breaking open
to let the hurt breathe
beautifully.

but what is beauty?
we’re told it’s symmetry.
elegance.
ease.
i say:
beauty is truth
without the filter
of what the world thinks
it should look like.
do you know
how many creatures
birth life in mess
and mucus
and moan?
do you know
how many forests
grow only after fire?

real beauty is the moss
eating the bones of fallen branches.
the way a wounded animal still cradles its cub.
the growth that only comes from ruin.
and i am ruin.
who learned to speak in weeds
that bleed through cracked concrete.
that dare to live in poisoned soil.
that refuse the manicured expectations
of gardens.
that knows this world
does not need more polished petals.
it needs more things willing to break
and be seen breaking.

if you listen closely,
you’ll hear it:
the pulse of a shattered heart
trying to sync with the great breath
of the planet.
trying to remember
it belongs here,
that love was the first language
spoken in this place.

this is how i know hurt people
don’t just hurt people.
but they also hold people
like no one else knows how.
because they’ve memorized the map
of every scarred terrain.
they know where the light leaks through.
they know how to lick a wound
without flinching.
don’t write us off as broken.
we are medicine made messy.

we are the ones who remember
what this world was before it got paved
with pretending you’re okay.

you’re not moved by my talent.
you’re moved by the tears in my fascia
that hold us all together.
because somewhere inside you,
you too are an animal,
shot in the heart,
still trying to sing.