Exposing Yourself Poem by David Whalen

Poetry is honesty
Clad in thin disguise
Undressing and exposing
Our mind’s to stranger’s eyes

Wanton, open,
uninhibited expressions
Unknowing and unwitting
Opinions and confessions

The baring of one’s inner self
Absent the admittance of knowing
Displaying, laying out upon the shelf
As if for public showing

Revealing yourself For what you are
Or for the way you think the world to be
Spreading yourself both near and far
For all the world to touch and see

By choice of word, By sly inflection
By point of view, by use of gender
By being shy, by introspection
By writing harshly or of prose so tender

You describe yourself Without the knowing
You can expose yourself with childish glee
You cast yourself to the winds ablowing
You strip yourself for all to see

From your writings you tell us
Secret Things you’d not say out loud
Private things, about your timid psyche
Of which your poetry is brazenly proud

Your poetry exposes yourself
And establishes your dominions
You expose yourself and that ‘s the how, of you
we readers form our opinions