I heard a rumor poets made a liv-

ing once upon a time from writing po-

ems from an adjunct at the univers-

ity who drove me to the airport term-

inal and asked me for a tip

and i asked the internet while waiting for

my plane if this was true and learned

that only in the last one hundred years

has any thought been given to the worth

of poetry unless it was a wealthy patron

these days patrons buy the news and sell

our hearts to us in crypto tokens

i understand we've trained a soup of words

that will teach us what we think and feel now

i get on the plane, and read, alone in a crowded station

where we are, all of us, waiting in our own heads