Outsider

I have never been homeless, never below the poverty line, nor have I ever been pushed into the violence of depressed neighborhoods.
I have never found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Never entangled, without choices, or desperate, and I paid for my mistakes as much as necessary, never more.
I have never been cast aside, at the bottom, or in some defenseless minority, never left hanging, never hunted or excluded.
I have never been recorded as an offender, never as enlisted in a seat of power or influence, scion or heir.
I have never become a member of some circle, company, or academy, I did not exchange awards, promotions, or positions on committees, I did not pass through the wrong beds, I was not shortlisted.
I neither bought nor sold, I did not eat to avoid being eaten.
That is why I became a poet. So that I would never have an excuse that I did not know. So that I could have peace when I blush.

However, I have been a deserted island for lovers' fighters, a wave forgotten in the calm of a youthful time, a castaway on a dry sofa, a cut tree for an unread library.
A glass unaccompanied by lips and hands, a sky unimaginable from colors, a fish caught in illegal night nets, a bird expelled from a burnt forest.
A frozen gaze before the spotlights of pain, rhyming when only a free step was needed, undetectable in statistics and unexplored in polls.
A common denominator and an unassigned numerator, indifferent to the offerings of power and the temptations of violence. That is why I became a poet to defend your heart, to truly mean it.