The Owl and Pussycat Went to Sea...

In a beautiful pea green boat.

When I was a very little, every night before bed, my dad would pull out a small green book. Coverless, dog-eared, the gilded lettering worn off the binding, he would carefully open it to a page and start to read. Inside, great men and women lived centuries past the limits of mortal breath, their hearts stamped in slightly faded ink onto yellowed sheets. Cramped and tiny, the print swelled the imaginations of me and my sister as Dad would read to us Walt Whitman, Johnne Donne, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Lewis Carrol and so so many more.

Some kids grew up on Goodnight Moon. I grew up to the Owl and the Pussycat. Not to forget O Captain my Captain, or Tyger, Tyger.

Its from these beginnings I developed a profound respect for poetry. Any way I try to describe why I admire and adore poetry comes out disjointed and bungling.

I'll just skip to the part where I post my own poems and hope they aren't terrible.

Crimsonosity

Life blood, bottled, brewed dark
to crimson, a striking shade of life.
Thrumming, humming, sounding, pounding,
beating an echoless lasting metronome
to existence. Rhythm of the ages;
one to two, two to three, three to four,
Pattern stronger than the stars above
yet silenced as a flame is snuffed.
A river of energy; sluicing through
narrow lanes to the outermost,
fading to lifeless blue, turning throughout
the endless circuit, starting at one again.

~~~~~

With poetry, one of the biggest statements you can make is that last line. If you can create a line that sticks in the mind of the reader, you've accomplished something. That moment when the reader takes in a breath that's maybe a fraction deeper than before, that instant of realization. You can never expect what effect your poems will have on someone, mostly because poetry is a form of writing very open to interpretation. Sometimes, I'd love to have a chat with Walt Whitman or Johnne Donne, to poets my dad used to read to me and my sister before we went to sleep.  I'd ask them what they were thinking of when they jotted down the notes and tidbits that led to the flowing lyrical delights of my childhood.

Now almost everyone has attempted at poetry when they are in that state of eternal suffering call being a teenager. No one understands you, no one will ever know what pain you are feeling. The darkness in your soul, the loveless state of existence. A lot of people have some poems floating around in that box or folder that they never open. Pretend it doesn't exist and play it off.

I wrote some of that stuff. Pardon me while I shudder at the thought of that dreck. After I got over myself and got into my college classes, I started taking a creative writing class. I had no interest in writing poetry. To me, it was just a stupid pastime when you were depressed or lovesick. I can wholeheartedly thank Dr. Robison for disillusioning me of that falsehood. From her encouragement, I learned that poetry is observation. If used properly, it can be used to present an reflection of the world to a reader, to think about something in a whole new way.

This is one of the first poems I wrote for the class that semester. It was eventually chosen and printed in the award winning student staffed literary and art magazine, Imprints. I've edited it bit since then to make it flow a bit better and take into account when I have learned but in effect, it is still that first moment when I realized what poetry can be for me.

Bits of Waking Moments

The mirror lay broken early lay on the floor, bouncing spots of life
across the room, glimmer piercing as they fly though the darkness.
Multitudes shuffle by, moving and shifting the pieces below,
Never seeing the artistry of the beautiful happenstance.
Down nor up, neither does the collective gaze, seeing not a shard
of the shimmering glamour.  Ever so rarely, a stray step shifts
sharp splinters into the eyes of one and wake them to the swirling
motes of living light. The moment of life reflected in that brightness,
a shattered bit of thought. Brought to wake in the light, the new
awareness rolls on as the new soul hungers, greedy for all sights to see.
Grasping for more until others would see the growing glow,
in all bits of waking moments.

~~~~~~~

Its almost 4 am and my eyelids are doing their level best to get together with my cheeks.

Thanks for listening to me rant about poetry and what it means to me, Lovelies.

Sleep well and Sweet dreams.