Real Men love Poetry

I remember somewhere around the fifth grade being captured by the power of words. I came across a poem so vivid, so concise that the words lept off the page and created a virtual image that consumed my sight, to the extent that the line between reality and the poetic image became blurred. To this day I enjoy words - little containers that we pour immense, powerful, and sometimes even contradictory meanings into. I had great discussion with my English Lit professor in college, a man of great passion who was an ex-Jesuit priest who left his vows to marry and explore love. He actually wept in our last meeting, out of envy for me as I began to discover the world of literature and was seeing so much for the first time. I never moved much beyond English Literature, even though the world is full of great writers and poets (and I've read some of them) but fascination with the giants like Coleridge and Wordsworth have satiated my literary addicition for many years.

Here is the poem that impacted me in the fifth grade (author unknown):

Little Miss Muffet, sat on a tuffet;
eating her yogurt plain.
While vampire gangs, with flaming fangs;
were eyeing her jugular vein.

While I have produced little (ok, zero) writing that is likely ever to be remembered, I'd like to think that my contribution to poetry with this little ditty might inspire someone, somewhere (I think I wrote this when I was about 25):

I like socks.
I think they're neat, I like to wear them on my feet.
Roll 'em up or roll e'm down,
Wear them in the city, wear them in town.
I like socks.