The Illiterate Poet

What do you call a poet
who is unable to read
and unable to speak?

I see the world around me
in black and white mesotints
that cheat just slightly by moving.
Rain dripping from wide tree leaves,
sleeping chests heaving as they breathe,
dark alleys through which fog steals.
Quiet pictures strike me.
My body surges with emotion,
my world is a heat index map
violent colors in chaotic patterns
which shift like clouds.
A mass moving together,
an ensemble fighting to form an individuality
pulling apart until it all fades away.

In that part of myself where dreams are formed,
I awake to narrate stories to myself
in gestures instead of words.
I live as though I do not know what words are for.
Like using words to communicate with
is a restriction I simply
will not work with.

-Sarah Bean