Poetry is an outlandish rebel
antithetical to life’s banality
too flashy to seem real
when situated among
generic acquiescence
and yada yada yada
Poetry defies complacency
delighting with tangy
surprise
Sometimes sizzling
in-your-face
a marquee on opening night
flapper dress twirling
knock-down drag-out
Other times tranquil
nuanced
a child blissfully asleep
hot cocoa steaming
fireflies buzzing in a jar
The Poet strips away
pretense, illusion
distilling life to
rudimentary truth
in tight and pithy form
piquing beauty
beyond propriety
to pure indulgent sense
protesting the ruse
of the American Dream
in favor of a rebel’s dream
the holler of King or Che
through sticky mesh
that binds us
Poetry is a strange peg
quizzically out of place
like true love hidden
in rubbish
or lost in war with
limbs askew
How to see the beauty of life
whilst saving it
how to sense a voice, a touch
amongst the ravaged
how to find a gasp of heaven
in all this mess
Hard to synthesize
this magnitude of contrast
this battery of opposites
contentious
across boundaries
a heartbreaking exercise
with impossible stakes
though the Poet dies
trying
hitting the mark
every now and then
when it comes to the
distillation of
love
in particular
______
(c)2013
