Instead of A Love Poet, I Should've Become A Whore

When I apply for a job

They never take love poet as experience

My position is like every other

but worse

I should've become

a dentist

I’m always shoving fingers into strangers’ mouths

pulling out words

fishing kisses from unflossed teeth

A maid

Dealing in dirty laundry

Sweatshop workers

I understand endless hours

there are no breaks from publishing my diary

moments shift down the assembly line

I’m sleazier than politicians

spewing rhetoric and half truths

paying off my emotions

Love poets are no better than strippers

naked for a crowd

extra personal for views

Drug dealers

trading lives for lines

Why can’t I be a used car salesman

My heart is sloppy seconds

but I sold it go another mile

A stuntman

jumping into old flames

throwing myself under buses

my voice is a professional stand-in

my heart more valuable by the break

I became a freak show

 bending over backwards 

and juggling emotional chainsaws

I was meant to be a surgeon

not the one on the operating table

love poets get no anesthesia

they auto-tune our screams

pulsate pain into music

Being a love poet only ensures is that I’ll starve.

I am starving

hungry for heartbreak

Bellowing to shatter cliches

spend this much time

Fabricating flirtation

Reality leaves your stomach empty

I must be emaciated

Because the world can see my bones

I need to saturate my silhouette with stories

Silence screams beneath my flesh

I live in the spacebar

And can never afford rent.