The Rest Of You Poem by William Kruse

An ever present danger of the struggling poet's choices
is thinking that it must be said with many different voices,
so, I disguise myself as cummings or some other of renown
and never let the 'me' get through and then self starts to drown
in idle idol worship and the thoughts don't flow as freely
as they did before I 'knew for sure' that I could not be me,
for I always want to know what the rest of you would say
and would it sound better if said another way?
For I want to be like Byron, Shelley, Keats or Tennyson;
or maybe Aiken, Auden, Sandburg, Frost or Dickinson;
or even Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Tate or Berrigan:
but that's not my way of thinking nor my mode of expression.
So, I've finally decided that whatever comes to mind,
I'll write as I would write it and leave the rest of you behind.
For it is I who do my thinking, it is I who hold my pen
and I refuse to worry about the rest of you again.