Dueling Poets

I finally figured it out.

What makes you and I so different.

And it’s not that you’re an artist and I am not.

It is not that you’ve got talent and I’m just mediocre.

No, I’ve got a gift burning under these bones.

It’s just that you and I are different.

I still have to sift through your words to find any meaning.

And people hear my words and they fall in step

They fall in line singing

“I’ve been there before.”

Your words take longer.

Take a multiple reading.

But that doesn’t make either of us any better or worse.

No, you and I are just different.

You’ve got these visions that you paint the world with.

Mixed up mumbo jumbo jangle words

And I just say it as it is.

This is how I feel.

This is how you made me feel.

This is how it is.

So you are no better than me

And I am no better than you.

We are just different.

Writing different poems

For different people

With different thoughts.

I’m not going to measure myself along your yardstick back bone

I am just going to write.

Write the way things are from the perch I’ve found.

Maybe someday you and I will meet

At a meeting of great minds

And they will say

“You are so different

So separate

And yet equals.

Grown from some of the same soil

And yet such different flowers”.