on becoming poet
Posted: May 21st, 2010, 4:20 am
when I decided poet
It was to find my words
among all the words
I did not know what my words
would be or how I would find them
I began hunting for them In books
as that was where they lived
sometimes they were hiding
or they just seemed buried
in themselves
buried in words
that did not say anything
except to the people that talked a lot
or so it seemed,apparently I had to
dig them up from their slumber
so I hung out in cafes and drank joe
I did not not know jack about how all
those great writers got that way
I read William and Arthur and Allen
I was drawn to their way of tellin it
The coffee made me all edgy
and I knew a poet had to have an edge
had to see things in extraordinary ways
Rimbaud kicked me out of my senses
or rather he awoke me from torpor
and filled my head with wild flowers
But these were Baudelaire's flowers of evil
I had to see each petal of the wicked rose
there was a tale here and a spell like a
gypsy bell that rattled around in the grounds
that shattered some delusion inside my dread
To open the fragile flower and speak to bloom
was like living on the streets where harlots
walked in a dream of halos and devilish hats
was like sitting in cafes and sipping the black
liquid that would spill my dreams like star dice
I sat for a thousand years this way with my cup
staring into the holy haunted hammering distance
waiting, waiting for the flood of my mind to pour
from my cheap pen and force my fingers to
grip the writing thing and bare down on the
white surface to rain letters on the moon
great legions of marching scrawls would conjure
the world and invoke visions of another one
would unleash flocks of birds that once flew
in skies that saw unspeakable deeds and uttered
monstrous proclamations to hoards of raggeds
who did not understand the meaning of the barks
but felt the urge in their blood to build civilizations
and sail across oceans and fall off the edge of it
where there be dragons that are made of heaven
It was to find my words
among all the words
I did not know what my words
would be or how I would find them
I began hunting for them In books
as that was where they lived
sometimes they were hiding
or they just seemed buried
in themselves
buried in words
that did not say anything
except to the people that talked a lot
or so it seemed,apparently I had to
dig them up from their slumber
so I hung out in cafes and drank joe
I did not not know jack about how all
those great writers got that way
I read William and Arthur and Allen
I was drawn to their way of tellin it
The coffee made me all edgy
and I knew a poet had to have an edge
had to see things in extraordinary ways
Rimbaud kicked me out of my senses
or rather he awoke me from torpor
and filled my head with wild flowers
But these were Baudelaire's flowers of evil
I had to see each petal of the wicked rose
there was a tale here and a spell like a
gypsy bell that rattled around in the grounds
that shattered some delusion inside my dread
To open the fragile flower and speak to bloom
was like living on the streets where harlots
walked in a dream of halos and devilish hats
was like sitting in cafes and sipping the black
liquid that would spill my dreams like star dice
I sat for a thousand years this way with my cup
staring into the holy haunted hammering distance
waiting, waiting for the flood of my mind to pour
from my cheap pen and force my fingers to
grip the writing thing and bare down on the
white surface to rain letters on the moon
great legions of marching scrawls would conjure
the world and invoke visions of another one
would unleash flocks of birds that once flew
in skies that saw unspeakable deeds and uttered
monstrous proclamations to hoards of raggeds
who did not understand the meaning of the barks
but felt the urge in their blood to build civilizations
and sail across oceans and fall off the edge of it
where there be dragons that are made of heaven