Writing Poems

deviant art by east monkey.


WRITING POEMS


Writing poems seems
bizarre
to the uninitiated,
I’ll admit.

Sitting for hours
in one spot
recalls Wordsworth’s
marvelous patience.

I’ve been soaked
by dripping fog,
shit upon
by insolent jays,
& serenaded
inside my humid summer,
tomato cantina
by dark-eyed crickets,
passionate cicadas,
& a female cardinal’s
distinctive lexicon.

I could’ve been
an abused clerk,
but I chose instead
this peculiar night-watchman’s job
that requires me
to record the sleepy hours
that roll
beneath a streetlight’s bruised eyelids.

Life in darkness
stimulates
holy imagination.

I suppose
you could say
that such
lively solitude
is an acquired taste
Otherwise, when you think
about it,
it’s a wonder
we have
as many
unrequited poets as we do.

Consider this.

What if poets
wrote only about their real lives,
lives
caught wriggling
beneath a chain-link fence
near the burning edge
of a Nazi searchlight?
Lives
juggling humiliation like chain-saws?
Lives overwhelmed
by the illuminated spots
of love & cruelty?

Come to think of it,
we can barely define
these words love & cruelty,
much less
construct elaborate symbols & myths
around them.

Oh, well.


Alan Britt

Posted over on Strange Road