I Do Not Understand Poetry

Get worked up, get angry

Spit the words

Hurricane force verbs

Verses of the worst

Night of your life

 

Show don’t tell

Throw your heart at the page

And trade in your secrets

For a festering bouquet of insecurities

 

Gullible, malleable, (I am)

Popping bubbles like a boss

I do not understand poetry

Give me another try

 

Drowning in a teacup?

That’s nothing

I can drown in words

Dragged under by allegory

Just vague enough to be artistic

One blink, now you missed it

 

Just let your mind wander

Step back from sanity, over the edge

It is fine, calm down, you will not see the earth rising

Though you might desire, perhaps even try to acquire, that gagged throat sensation of lightness (generally experienced by the flightless (though not necessarily by those who know just what flight is)), your last seconds will be violent, possibly because you’re a nihilist, much too realistic for dying and other trivial wastes of time

Pardon me

Sometimes I try so hard to create rhythm

That I forget to leave spaces to breathe in

 

Inhale

Exhale

Continue

 

Do you ever feel like you are just grasping in the dark?

Concocting phrases with whatever images are left in the pantry

Stir through some synonym till it tastes vaguely edible

Maybe even a pun

Then let it simmer

Balance every flavour just right and it might

Just might

 

Make you shiver

 

I think it is poetry

So long as you use the word ocean

Or cadence

Or lilting

Preferably all three

 

The lilting cadence of the ocean

Pretentiously simple

When I use it

Simply pretentious

When I read it

 

Don’t start me on structure

Order, sequence, diction, directives

I can assure you that my structural integrity

Is far more chaotic than the arrangement of my words could ever be

 

Sometimes I like to sit in contradictions

Squatting in a foxhole of paradox

Neither of us understand

But they are my words

Mine

They mean something to me

 

Whatever that might be

I wrote this poem for a creative writing exercise. The objective was to write an Ars Poetica style poem instructing people how to write poetry. However, I don’t believe anyone knows the formula of how to write poetry. Creativity cannot be defined.

Cheers for reading

Tim

P.s. The featured photo is of me at Great Barrier Island, the most beautiful place in the world.