Short Statement on Poetics--#6

[Lightning Rod]

Poems are like box lunches. They are food for the soul that you carry with you.
The best poems tell you secrets about life.
Poetry should make the little LED inside your brain light up or warm your heart or seize your gut or make the snakes rattle in your root chakra.

We remember poems because they say something to us. Songs are a great example. Voltaire said, "Anything too stupid to be said is sung."

Poetry is older than the written word. Until the invention of writing, all poems were sung. The melody and rhythm helped the poet remember the words because all poems were memorized. These poems weren't what you would read today in The New Yorker, they were stories, they were the news. And they told secrets about life.

A poem needs legs. It is a portable idea. It needs to be cut to the essentials so that it can easily go from place to place. A poem has no life unless it is repeated.

Why do we memorize a poem? Why do we take it with us? Because it says something to us, it tells us secrets about life.

[Arcadia]

box lunches? food usually get sticky, warm and all mixed-up in box lunches... but sure it works if you are hungry!!!!!

I´ve been enjoying the serie, professor!!!!!!!!!!

[Doreen Peri]

the birth of a poem

you know when a poem is overdue
when the concepts slip through
shaded revenues during the moments
snared in blue nights, during the very few
minutes before light makes morning break
as dreams undo perfumed pillowcases
and shadows drift away
when you awaken.

it is then when the poem comes -
it is then when a stanza breaks
and heartbeat drums take over -
it is then when your lover becomes words,
when absurdities clear, when all held dear
erupts from the fragments, when
your verse is steered closer to now,
nearer to a vow spoken to honor earth,
nearer to the birthright of a soul immersed
in time nursed by yet unspoken dangled vagaries
which plague the very nature of the rental space
we all take up.

you know when it's long overdue
when the stuff, the residue, the ash,
the cashed-in vastness you so very much want to state
is served up on a plate you can't quite hold,
when the vision of a stolen mission is blasted
from a stun gun into new space,
when you cannot help but trace your fingertips along
the inside out song you only imagined being written –

when the lyric is projected as syllable inflections
and without intention, without plan, without being able
to stabilize colors or spans of time, or cries or wishes
or vistas or mists which frequent dreams,
(since none of it is what it ever seems) –
it is then when the poem comes.

And so you capture it, you trap it,
you tap it out to grab the vagrancy of truth
and make it known that it is caught now
in a stanza or an image permenantly recorded,
stored on particle linen with the nub of a pen
or in an electronic file to prove you soothed
the ruse by witness.

a poem is born when morning grievances
cease to mourn, when spirit leaves turn up
to catch the vast reign of plain thought —

when you've fought and won the light,
caught a rainbow phrase
and the reader hears through your sight,
feels your breath upon their ears,
and the touch of lines becomes
a dear treasure, the measure measured
by the presence the word implies.

the birth of a poem is a morning glory
opened to a hummingbird story sucking life from
the stamen, no matter how vile the pistol, no matter
how difficult to retrieve the memory of fertilization.

the birth of a poem
needs no excuse or explanation.
it is the celebration of the
opening of the legs of the universe –
letting out life.

[Lightning Rod]

doreen, this is a real fucking poem

it's got everything

it's got music, it's got rhythm

it's got meaning, it has a journey

kudos

I hope you kill them in Baltimore with this tonight.