Friday, April 4, 2014

poetry month

Poetry Month
 
 
Resonant phrase aligns.
Mystic fire sprites manifest, 
call to neural chambers: "Come to play!"
Sparkling children fashion effervescent flares.
Innocence against random nightscape
extols, reveres.
Humbles savants with unknown unknowns.
Nascent moment flown, eyes carry amazement,
enticed by fun, perhaps an epiphany or two.
Inner ears
merrily engage, swept up in daring code.
Intimacy, kindling as heady lyric,
spreads, ignites.
Muse lit lanterns take wing,
illuminate eternity.
Incite.
 
 
~
 
Disappointed and Disillusioned, Courageously Facing a Seemingly Empty Life
 
 
Dressed in sadness.
Depressed to madness.
Mad to believe in passion,
which never lasts beyond the hour.
Brays to bequeath the
power to stand, to breathe.
Moira appears, macabre hag
preens her wares.
"See how it was, how it could be.
Drag and drop your face, your failures
onto a printed page. Can you see
new meaning? New lamps for old."
She cackles, like
a metronome.
New maps for a new age.
That charming village erstwhile
known as Hell
metamorphed into Helvetica.
All that acrid sorrow
tomorrow's poetry.
 
~
 
 
Pop Quiz
 
 
What is more useless than a poet, and why?
 
Cloistered in my artist's garret, threadbare garments more holes than whole,
paint spattered, unruly and unkempt,
barely aware of the need for sustenance or even air,
entranced by the necessity of exploring, exposing my vision
I am the essence of romance.
 
Typing, writing clever syllables, I am merely effete,
despite my black attire and permanent scowl.
Even if they are good words, finely wrought, express deeply true emotion,
they are almost literally a dime a dozen.
To expose my wound is inelegance, to explore my essence a narcissistic malaise.
 
I am the real deal -- the poet-philosopher, the idealist dreamer, the journey's fool.
Surely I should be surrounded by acolyte worship, at my feet, honored to breathe the sacred
incense of my magnificence.
 
Yet here I stand with bills unpaid in the squalor of a rented room,
unadorned by idolatry.
 
 
~
 
 
 
We are a well at the center of the Universe
suspended like a spider spun out from
webbed space evolving.
All that ever is, like sea rain
catalyzed by light, is processing
rainbows,
manifest illusions,
into effervescent poetry.
 
~
 
 
It is a poem because evocative nature
seeks language, because will intends to speak
more than prosaic words.
Massage to revitalize imagination.
Lines break, imply stage direction phrasing. 
Histories, mystic pleas, lovers’ epiphanies
both oral and visual, as well as
experimental
genre melding and overturning.
Look/listen for what speaks to you.
 
~
 
Voices in my head speak
in poetry, prose, creative nonfiction
stories of courage, adventures in change
 
Tales, whispered spells, hypnotize,
wrench veils between epiphany and sleep.
Deeply darkened mists of memory
prismed in poetry
arouse such imagery.
Be at peace.
Breathe in glacial wind
to warm in secret private seasons.
Breathe out
a better world.
 
 
~
 
 
 
Perhaps we constrain ourselves by our definitions
of "poetry" whatever they may be for each of us, or collectively.
Perhaps we would better serve the honoring of our
deeper, more carefully observed,
more cherished, more reflective,
more hormone evoked or thoughtfully
worded communications by freeing
our critique from "poetry"?
 
When we call "poem"
expectations climb aboard.
Is this one of those silly word games
or a test of my ability to please authority?
Rhymes herding phrases out
of clarity,
over-ardent attempts at sincerity?
What if I just want to explain
beyond the scope of everyday chatter?
What if I want to say how
and why abstractions matter
or work out ways to scatter
bits of emoting on a page?
Words with the precision and ambiguity
to save visions, ahas! glimpses.
Capture gaze at nature's seas
and stars.  Bring immediacy
of horror or wonder, or aid grappling
to decipher commonalities
that could increase
conviviality.
 
 
~
 
 
 
You expound tale of private familiarity simple, trivial, self-contained.
Profound sincerity, eternal poetry
 
 
~
 
 
 
Poetry is about meaning and wonder
Poetry can say:  "Yes, we feel the same"
and "Yes, we can go further, together."
It's not the rhyme or word or name
that creates this form we ponder
to say what we've seen, how we came
to be who we are, how another's
ways of making sense have made us
more ...
 
 
~
 
 
poetry mice
nibble nimble syllables
feed on grainy meaning
scamper renewed, enlarged
 
~
 
 
Binary stars blink celestial code.
Music of spheres, of oblongs, of ellipses
twinkle far beyond the constant light.
Cycles within cycles within rhythms within
the magic of rhyme, within eternity's tricks
of repetition and mutation.
Crystallized, brought to sublime fruition.
Poets taste, express cosmic recipes,
tongue to tongue.
 
 
~
 
 
 
Poker as a Metaphor for Poetry:
Play the cards you are dealt,
inflated for the gaze of your opponents.
Don't squander emotion reactively.
Enjoy the thrill of being in the game.

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