Poets & Also-Rans

Is there a difference between a poet
and an also-ran? In shape of ego, belief,
or persistence? Rather than conduct
a dialectic for relief of pain each suffers
releasing the words contained within
a seething soul, needs must you seek
an answer in a land beyond this page.

One says the words in keeping with common
meaning, one truly means what he says while
believing only he can understand; there is no
plan or grandeur in their transactions unless
it strikes with chilling finality between the eyes,
a realisation that nothing more can,
or should, be said. Or would be read.

The also-ran will try for more. The poet
is dead from expended effort, wasted
and too sore to raise his shattered head.
He will celebrate badly, exacerbate his
soul’s injuries, crawl the floor for days
before he’ll write again. Meanwhile the
poll jiggers on, stochastically.

And in the end it triggers ringing changes
randomly, bringing succour or dejection,
reflection or relief. It is the chronic thief
of poetic illusions, the mother of creative
crime, and the poet dies or lives while the
also-ran cries foul, denies his is a sorry press
acclaimed, shifts cause, slides the blame.

In foul mourning the poet will rise and
try to write again as he knows he must
while the also-ran lies abed,
still believing only he can understand.
© I.D. Carswell 2006