What is the job of a poet?
To lie beautifully.
Kind of.
I mean, no one really talks like that.
Do you know how long it takes to get the rhythm right?
Sometimes countless hours,
spent formulating thoughts.
Pushing the dust of fragmented ideas into a mold
consisting of 26 letters.
And then put out into the world with the sincere hope
that the person who reads it will understand the intention
or maybe have something to add
and that idea that was once just gaseous
is in many minds, as a liquid ironclad.
And he sits in a dark room at a desk
going on midnight with work in the morning
trying like hell to create something
working out in his own heart the meaning of his thoughts
using definitions that he knows to shape them into clumps
and
put
them
on
the
screen
for you to see and hopefully enjoy
the way the poem looks and seems and makes you feel
as though you met him through his words.
veridical paradoxes
the way they
twist words in their fingers
like a game of cat's cradle ,
and scatter
the letters back out ,
they make you remember
a feeling
that you'd forgotten ,
overlooked
.
and spill it across your tongue like nightmare ink ,
tortured words too ill to speak ,
to make themselves
relive it again ,
and find solace
in bleeding their heart out .
to make tangible
the intangible ,
to give reason
to the unreasonable ,
to cross out their heart
and re-write it in chalk lines
in a shape
a little easier to read .
to breathe .
and confess it all to you .
and hide .
A Poet on Fire
A poet is a warrior of words who fears death yet dies and rises in dreams.
A poet is the light that is hidden in the darkness and gives hope to lost souls.
A poet is a lonely mind ablaze on fire like a candlelight, and who rides on the wings of ink and paints the expanse of different worlds on canvas.
Midnightink 9-7-23
Magic
Poetry is a beautiful literary means in which the writer may connect with someone by using a few or a vast number of carefully selected phrases. The poet pulls in his reader, capturing his senses with unique word sequences and cascading rhythms that are capable of stirring deep emotions. Powerful poetry evokes an array of memories and ideas with which the reader identifies or connects. A poet can easily stoke the reader’s imagination and dreams, taking him on a trip to any place or any spectrum of time.
Poetry is essentially magic, and the poet, the magician.
After the Show
Jer'Imyah swept the floor. Ingrid put away the leftovers. Jason brought out the coolers. It took two people to pull the tablecloths, and two more to haul out the garbage bags to the dumpster. Keith coiled the electrical cord, while Blaise loaded the equipment into the truck. Alyson checked the clipboard, as Avril counted the serving utensils. Carl and Denise folded the chairs. Ted carried them away. You stood transfixed with your back to the stage lights, your hair catching fire when I passed from the right not daring to touch. Smiling, you're focused the other way at a crinkled silver candy wrapper swirling in the crosswind of the open doors, and I follow, the length of your arm extending through all the beams of hot and cold:
Shh, look! Someone
Left a little Fire
Cracker
for our
Grand
finale!
09.07.2023
That's the job of a poet challenge @TheWolfeDen
A poet
To bleed onto paper and act like we aren't hurting;
To soap up our pain and make something pretty with the stain;
To hide things behind metaphors and similes.
As poets we describe feelings we can’t name
and write moments we can’t remember.
We feel too much of what others have forgotten
and so we try to remind them
of what it feels like to walk
around with your heart
beating in your
hands.
Seeds take root-- leaves begin to sprout and flatten eagerly in the sun, taking in the warmth of its story
Leaves rest in perfect silence
being, listening
A miniscule bud peeks through the wisdom of the leaves, and with slow, patient, seductive time, opens thirsting petals
The sun strikes on knowledge innate
listening, questioning
Greenery rises and falls, sprouts and withers, swayed by the creeping seasons, by what the sun allows
Rain drenches petals but nourishes roots
questioning, yearning
Betrothed to the cycle, the garden joins itself with what has been, what is and what will be, refuses the stink-rot of stagnancy
The sun, She seeks change, too
yearning, knowing
The poet is of the Earth and Sky, interwoven, formed within the space that lies between the line; employed to enchant, enlighten, entomb
The poet: rooted vessel for perspective
knowing, being
