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.