open space

Poets say 
               April showers bring May flowers
So too say the liars, the preachers and prostitutes 
who come to express what they’ve heard, but not
what they know. 
    Unlike poets, 
the doubtful and the disenchanted 
often cry foul as we together mourn the loss of 
common sense and decency.
A tarnished soul with a litany of pleas, a poet learns 
words are worth little more than sand if not spoken 
with wisdom derived from a broken heart, physical
traits of emotional details, and second-hand lessons 
from third-rate teachers. 
        It hurts to bleed. 
        It hurts to need validation. 
Honesty is not worth what it once was, but comes 
at a significant cost. 
        April soon, May will surely follow, 
and politicians will say only what they want to hear 
(like the prostitutes and preachers). Fraudsters all. 
Only the poet sees the crime, unless 
you know wherein the message lies.
        Society becomes as calm as it is 
corrupt, when we take the words of a televangelist or
talk-show host as truth. Moving swiftly through topic 
of the day – fentanyl crisis or racial pain – they don’t 
know any better when speaking of so much worse. 
Nor can they tell the difference between 
propaganda and verse. 
        The poet writes not of spring flowers, 
        but of the dread instead.
Whom else but a poet (or discarded lover)
would sit in the rain and wait for tulips to bloom? 
Other souls think it too impractical, too illogical, or 
simply too wet to care. 
           Them who cannot taste the difference
           between raindrops and a salty tear 
           may never know bona fide honesty 
                                       until they read about it.

© 2021 j.g. lewis

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