I am not a poet
I can’t gather words and arrange them into bouquets
All those nouns and verbs stitched together with adjectives and conjunctions like Grandma’s embroidery
Cultivating toothsome words that fill your mouth then flow up into your nasal passages until you exhale their aroma like the first time you tasted rose-flavored Turkish Delight
Euphoria, Gossamer, Sequoia, Silhouette, Effervescent
I had to look all those words up. Words like that aren’t really in my lexicon.

I am also not a poet because
None of my poems are about anything
My poems don’t inspire or change lives
I just write as a way to throw some light on how I feel or what’s going on around me
I’m selfish about my poems – they’re for me
But I guess if someone else could relate to my words, that’d be okay.

I am for real not a poet because 
I don’t even write all that often
To call yourself a poet, don’t you need to write more than just a couple times a year?
Just because I think about writing every second of every day, if I don’t put pen to paper it doesn’t count
Right?

You have to stop calling me a poet because
There is a difference between poems and poetry
Poetry is art and flowers and hunger and longing 
Righteous anger and desire and empathy and 
Tears and a huge bowl of fettuccine alfredo, warm in your belly
Your favorite blanket draped around your shoulders
A sunrise after a night of thunderstorms
And poems…
Just MY plain old poems?
Those are moth-eaten, old towels too small to wrap around your waist,
The crusts of toast where the butter didn’t reach
Scratchy tissues that rub your nose raw when you’re already sick
Just enough to get you by, but you’re always going to be left wanting more than they can give

See? I told you I wasn’t a poet