Declaration (Poetry)

My poems cry
like woken babies in the night
with an appetite
for something near-divine

It’s a shame I can only
give them milk my body spills
or I have water red
as blood’s salt-bitter wine

I’ve a nipple as replacement for
a gold-nib fountain pen
but the poems’s little babies
won’t accept

artificial comfort
they throw up phony lines
however hard I sing
and soothe and pet

Unwrapped
they’re fretting naked
November’s hungry hunt
for sustenance sublime

awkward-limbed
like insects praying
I declare they can’t possibly
be mine