The peddler of words

(A tribute to the great poets of yore)

The Peddler of Words

With wisdom quotidian, and knowledge none too vast;

With brawns pedestrian, and courage always short;

With penury as my bride, and darkness for a friend,

With aloofness as a habit, on no mortal I depend.

With manner hardly kingly, and riches none to give,

With nothing worth of mention, an obscure life I live.

Scoffing fellowmen hold me in poor regard,

Oh lonely dreamer, what are you but an upstart!

But there is something of a divine light,

In what I do by the dead of the night.

A daytime squandered and badly spent,

To acquire by nightfall an angelic bent,

To sit with frenzied papers at my table,

To pen down poem, story and fable;

A head full of ideas, a heart light like spring;

Oh slumbering fools, now the upstart is the king!

Delirious and inspired, I go on to write,

Reveling and marveling into the night!

Laughing at my humor, you rejoice in glee,

And burst into tears at my crafted tragedy,

My heroes they inspire, and my demons they scare,

My villains you hate, and for my orphans you care!

This world of no God’s, but of an upstart’s alone,

I change your life, all from my dark little home.

But I aspire not riches, those are not for me,

For a mere peddler of words is all I want to be!