It’s been decreed
by important people
that we cannot speak of anything
except our own
experiences.  Cannot speak
of others’ lives.  Cannot
put ourselves into their shoes
unless they are non-living
or at the least non-human.  
Cannot speak, in fact,
of anything at all except
what we know directly
within the context of
what happens to us day to day —

which is why I find myself
stapled to this very irritated elephant,
holding a relic from the Crusades,
wearing the mask of a politician,
and trying desperately to learn
a foreign language.  All I wanted 
was to be myself, be a poet,
and I tried to do that
but I got sick of trying to use
my painful inner life
and outer utter drudgery,

so I decided that if 
I could not be
that poet,
I’d be
their poet.