Survival

No, it’s not a luxury you said, of your art.

Dear poet, show me, please 

––some lesson in survival.

In lieu of an answer, you took position on the line. 

There’s safety within the perimeter, they say.

Do you know this? Perhaps, and still reject it.

Or perhaps not, because for you that inside

is no such thing. Your silence won’t protect

you, you whisper––then sing, to signify the

alchemy by which you transform its impulse

into language, the language into music, into

a body’s dance along the wire.