Voices Not Your Own Poem by Kurt Philip Behm

"Don't write for Poets,
their knives unclean

With jagged edges,
whose cuts demean

Their opinions frayed,
by wounds unseen

Whose righteous selves,
reflection preens"

Write for those listeners starved and wild,
with hearts not carved of jade

Call out to those aliens of the light,
still trapped within the shade

With words to christen and words unwashed,
no listener disowned

Each verse a prayer at best when sung,
—by voices not your own

(Villanova Pennsylvania: May,2017)