I AM a New York poet. That’s what it says on my bio. Actually it says "Brooklyn poet" but I am not one of those Brooklynites who are scared to leave the borough so I’ll take license to expand the description.

It took me a long time to admit that fact -- not the New York part, that detail becomes fairly obvious when get off the train to go home at Bay Parkway -- but the poet part. It takes a lot of courage to proclaim your calling, especially when it’s something so, shall we say, poetic?

Being a poet is not, of course, my day job. That would be just too utopian. I can think of nothing better than spending my day rhyming rhymes, tapping rhythms and penning sonnets. But, alas, I found that poesy doesn’t pay too well. And so, I toil at my desk job, writing press releases and the like while slipping in an occasional metaphor that gets edited out by the three other people who end up proofing my releases before they go out anyway.

I guess it’s not the worst job in the world. It sure beats working at the pet store on Nassau Street where my duties included cleaning out bird cages, or the Ben & Jerry’s on Third Avenue where I ended up gaining 20 pounds. It certainly pays the bills.

But it doesn’t fill my heart with song like poetry does. And I find I am not alone. It seems that poets in New York are about as prevalent as broken sidewalks or busted parking meters or waterbugs. In fact, I was happy to "discover" an entire thriving community of poets with readings held every day of the week. The readings have become a reprieve, what I like to call entertainment coupled with a therapy session. And they cost much less than $125 an hour or whatever rate shrinks may charge these days.

There are poets living right under your noses. I am wont to think one even lives in the apartment below me -- the guy is never home and, when I do see him, he always looks like he is wrapped deep in thought (either that or he’s just thoroughly confused -- a state not uncommon with finding poetic inspiration). Not that you can judge a poet by the cover, of course. Many of our ideas lurk inside while we toil away teaching kids, hauling garbage or proofreading copy for consumer magazines -- all the while collecting material for our next haiku.

New York is a breeding ground of ideas, an ideal place for poets to live and work. There is always something happening, always something to write about. The city is rife with subject matter; it’s a giant index. True, you are not going to get a lot of nature poems out of the mix -- unless you count finding rusty razor blades in Prospect Park or condoms in Central Park a thing of nature -- but you do get plenty of subway poems, homeless people poems and poems about noises and rats.

Poets are very observant folks. We have to be. It’s part of our job description. Not only do observational skills play a huge part in the creation of poetry, but so do crises. And we all know New York City is full of crises. They don’t have to be catastrophic events -- although the Abner Louima incident spawned so many poems about police brutality that I still hear them resonating to this day -- but they can be the daily crises that are either magnified or turned sideways and looked at from a different angle. Like a forlorn glove lost in the 86th Street slush. Or the tattered sign proclaiming that there is a missing dog named Nora roving through Bensonhurst. Or commuting nightmares. In fact, one of my best poems, if I do say so myself, came out of taking the wrong train from City Hall station.

So the next time you see someone riding on the subway, or waiting for the bus, or walking down Broadway with a pen and paper in hand or even talking into a tape recorder, do not be alarmed. Be glad that there is a modern-day metaphysician, the poet, to record this world and to help people see things differently. And right after you wish him or her a Happy National Poetry Month ("April is the cruelest month," says T.S. Eliot, but not for poets), take a moment to look at the world their way -- you might just surprise yourself with an epiphany.