Speaking

It is not difficult
to speak
with passion.

Let your chest inflate
and your features narrow
and bellow
words with gravitic gusto until the last trail out frail,
like the last lick
in a tube
of frosting….

But don’t
let passion fool you.
It survives stupid.
Don’t dismiss
because it triumphs
over idiots.

Much stronger is passion
than ideas if it can mire with foolish things
and foolish poets
and yet stay admirable.

I pray
let me be the fool
who speaks shameful stupid
in earnest and when
the wise passionates
come and knock me down
(and they will)
I will beg them in equal
earnest to
drown me in their truer
to pour their paints on me
drown me in their color
and the paint drains into the ground
revealing me, a perhaps
hypocrite, in a
fresh coat -- white
washed total