If cheese has a meaning I don’t understand why,
if I did I would be a poet
and If I were
I would understand that too
because a title like “a poet” only truly belongs
if you also belong to it
and to me that seems impossible.

Because when dark ink hits the page
it twinkles like the stars
like the million stars that make the galaxy
and the million more that make our lives
shining, each, with a spark of truth and a ton of lies
and things beyond that even poets don’t understand

And yet when it speaks for them now
it speaks not of truth or of lies
Not of stars or ink or life
but of cheese
and I somehow still doubt why.

But maybe a poet
who speaks of only stars is a fool
A fool like me,
if you could earn such a name.

because maybe we will never understand those stars
unless we wonder,
and wonder much
about why when a child peers into our ink
they see nothing of the stars
and the lies and truth
they only ask
if someone would it speak for them
and then explain what it means
behind all that fancy verse
and one could never deny the pure graphite
behind their careless smiles

and I still wonder why when they gaze unto the dark
they see no galaxies in the crisp air
the ones that compose my fancy script
they only look up and are not afraid to wonder
why the moon still looks more like cheese
than it ever did of rock.