Tag Archive for Poetry and the Poet

I Could Fill Each Line

I could fill each line

Every single blank space

In the entire world

Force it upon people

“Poetry. It’s poetry. I’m a poet”

I would say haughtily

And it wouldn’t mean anything

I could sit and spew words in ink

Wind Elephant Moon Tattoo

And insist that it’s poignant

Only me and the “ignorant”

Would know I’m full of shit

And that I don’t say anything

Everything is disposable

Why should words be different?

I’m not sure, but in rare cases

They are different

And effecting

And altering

These words aren’t

But when it burns right

And your mind makes it to the page

It is—in a way no one can explain.

 

The reality of solitude

Is simple and obvious

Though entirely unspoken

But the practice

The goddamned practice

Is another issue completely

Best described as blurry

And constantly fluctuating.

If we’re as singular as evidence shows

Why are there so many people?

It seems that despite every yin

Having a yang

There is no balance in people:

When one is needed

They’re in hibernation

(or their souls at least)

And when all that’s desired

Is peace and time to sift through

Our individual insanity

You’re swamped by insipid people

Wanting from you

What they don’t give in return

Posthumous Reflections of a Prehumous Poet

It is a difficult thing at seventeen

to read Poe and Stevenson and feel a certain connection

with them, knowing that recognition

was almost solely posthumous,

post-death,

having spent all their lives pouring—

emptying—their very beings onto paper,

into masterpieces of life-containing language,

and then struggling with the hope

and ever-accompanying despair—

will this alter an existence?

One poet said the best measure

for good literature is whether we

live more intensely for the reading of it;

Poe and Stevenson spent

decades waking early,

wrestling with idea symbols

read left to right,

and then, eyes bloodshot,

crawling into an arctic bed, shivering.

Their whole lives long, they never knew

if the fervor they had squeezed from their own

would transfer to others’ or if it

would wash away

like windshield graffiti in a thunderstorm.

 

In suburban America I am told that I

still have six decades to look

forward

to. I think that will perhaps be

a terrible trial, an artistic

eternity; to write even when no one

cares enough to love you like Greene

or to even to be as important as Orwell to

know you are hated.

 

The paper stretches blank

before me, beckoning my pen.

As if drafting a will, I worry that it will matter to none

until I die.

A Symbol

Colors and depths, shape

Responding to my gaze

Or not

Ignoring the weight I put on them

Because they are not real

A window

A door

A comparison

A symbol

Watching me as if they had divine right

They tell all my secrets

If I cannot sleep

Then I cannot lie

As touch meets touch

So too does look meet with liquid reflection

A three-point star of onlookers

Who observe silently

Cloudy with a foreign intake

The salt tears that escape

And sometimes an inner light which shines them forward

The eyes become a vision.

A Poem

Your pen suddenly

Reaches down, blemishes

the undefiled white page.

Blue lines stare

mockingly at you

‘Well what will it be?’

they ask of you

Impatiently waiting to

Be filled with blue ink

scratched into words, clauses,

Sentences that express

Those deep hurts

quiet moments

soft gentle voices in your

Heart. beats with anticipation

how can you express

all these mysteries?

How can words touch,

break, destroy, create

feelings undiscovered

See?

The beauty of these words

uplifts me.

The poem is complete.