Wednesday, October 12, 2011

My Brand of Poetry

That’s the thing about me though –
I don’t really write the way I’m supposed to write.
Academics probably can’t scan my work so easily
and find cohesive narratives or
thematic categories to file my poetry into.

A poet really isn’t supposed to write about poetry
let alone explain what he writes while he’s writing it
to the reader as he tries to figure out if this is a joke
or something different I should pay attention to
or put it down because I can’t figure it out.

There’s nothing to figure out.

Poetry should make you feel something.
Sometimes it’s all those cliché things we think it is
when we think about poetry like watery streams and tear-drops
and snowflakes and sunsets and relationships
and sometimes it’s a jagged piece of wood running across your shoulder-blade.

Try to understand, for me it’s not really conscious
or even stream-of-consciousness but something completely
alien to ordinary life,
and because of that more true to real life as I experience it.

Here:
It’s the glance you exchange with the person in the coffee shop,
the one you see and who sees you and who you don’t talk to
but are flooded with an impression of a thousand thoughts
and feelings and smells and characters
for a brief moment in time as you fiddle in your pocket for change
and wonder something about them,
all the while trying to look normal.

That’s poetry – it’s the magic of the ordinary.
All the rest is far too academic and intellectual
to even come close to touching its essence. 


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