Do They Listen?

Speak like a poet with a sailor's soul

Concrete jungles bred a thorn-riddled rose

Tongue laced with bitter poison and honey-sweet prose

Yet sometimes when I speak, none who listen would know

I feel as though, from time to time, through written rhyme or verbal prose

That none may heed the creed I live, that none may catch in depth my woes

Soft-spoken flourishes in dialects unheard by tone deaf ears

Lead to excess of vocalized aggression carrying my fears

Sometimes it feels as Arabic language to Englishmen

The way one can so perfectly encapsulate their meaning in layers

To have all of the intricacies shredded, their flowers beheaded,

The garden of their words, its mosaic of beautiful colors and patterns

Discarded and trampled and trodden and burned

As inherent to their worldview is the beauty through which they speak

And inherent to those around them may be the lack of understanding

And even if they understand, can translate the legend and read out the map,

It feels like they gloss over, whether warnings of monsters or dangerous seas

An experienced sailor, for my class and my age, and yet all of my words go to waste

Do they not wish to heed them? Not care what I say? Wish themselves the experience either way?

Do they hope to prove me wrong, their hearts longing for clout?

Am I thinking too hard? Is my heart tinged with doubt?

But when I look, and view the truth, remove the gold-tinted glasses when I look in the mirror,

I see despite however I think I may be

That I am still a sailor.

I may sail higher seas,

Brave stronger storms,

Record vaster, more ornate logs of my travels,

Yet all the same, I am a sailor, as are the rest of my kin and folk.

And all of them are poets too, though perhaps I simply cannot read them.