• Yeah, they wanted to be contagious,
    catching, passed orally
    with every breath between lovers,
    sensually whispered,
    or with each friend's recommended reading list,
    each little bit of spit carrying their words across
    languages, barriers, crossing property lines
    until their disease made people easy,
    until their illness killed less and started
    making sense.
    They fancied themselves writers in an attempt to label
    and avoid labels, because who introduces themselves as
    "the poet" at a party?
    They couldn't hide how mixed up in their messages they felt
    how potent their meanings became with the addition
    or loss
    of a word. Words. Words. Words.
    Wrapped up in letters, stamped, posted and pressed into
    forms, fonts, styles,
    rhythmic mantras, tantric rumbas,
    they asked for partners in a dance across keyboards,
    notebooks, walls, signs.
    They scrawled. They scrimped for scraps and change and beer or wine,
    the essentials
    and they called themselves writers
    so they could consider themselves a friendlier kind of smiling clown
    so they wouldn't be laughed at or hated
    but noticed just the same.
    In that way,
    their sweetest sickness keeps spreading.