Their Poet

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.