freshly sharpened

freshly sharpened minds
can still dull an audience, unlightened
intellects like pencils, freshly sharpened
prone to crack if you push too hard, so
sing your poems softly, and
save your fast facts for the pack rats publishing
frothy pints by the half-rack of head lines
heads line, heads lined, up
to blind back packers
cyclops them, psy-cho-socialize them,
sike, stop them, out
of their path-
ologies, mythologies of equal rights, and
lights vibrating through mics
shine my brother
don’t whine my brother
we’ve time my brother, so slow down
I don’t want your weak mechanical pencil graphite raps
don’t wanna hear your carbon copy journalings
spill your ink for us
poets don’t use pencils, aye, there’s the rub,
drowning in our own paint,
we spit, we spill, we spatter and mumble bubbles from deep
drowning in our own paintings
choking on our own tongues
inking ecstasy from exquisite corpses
we die for this.
you know what this, is
this is another time out, hold up, wait a second
another 5 minutes in the chair in the corner
another “we’ll return to your regularly scheduled programming in just a minute”
this is an interruption
this is a chance to break out, mate
inmate, cellmate, flatmate, hellmate, lovemate, checkmate
this is the end of the games
this is no one ups, no more lives, cats gotta jump
this is your choice
this is fighting to breathe under successive waves of defeat
this is rising against the tide of popularity
this is speaking out
this is a piano dangling out a 13th story window
this is a whale in your bathroom
this is heavy shit falling on your pinky toe
this is a freshly sharpened pencil
stuck in your head
using a pen.