Tag: Meaning

This Is Not a Poem

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This is not a poem

Despite the rhyming and construction

This is what the critic says

Because it doesn’t follow the poem’s function

I have to show you the dilemma

You have to struggle to understand me

You have to encounter the limitations

Of what a “good poem” can and can’t be

Clever lines don’t make it poetry

Despite conveying my intention

Good poetry has to stick to the rules

And be the result of pure invention

Please don’t come with inspiration

Don’t express in your own style

Don’t emerge with your own cadence

March in step and single file

Try to sound like someone famous

Do not always write in rhyme

 

People cry for peace

Meanwhile they are dropping bombs

Dead men can’t start wars

 

I just dropped some haiku lines

 

But maybe that isn’t poetry

I’ll ask an expert. They will know.

Or maybe they just know what poems are not

“Iambic pentameter is the purest flow”

Truthfully it doesn’t matter

If it isn’t poetry, I’d still be writing

I’d just be calling it something else

And in its expression be delighting

Not simply because I wrote it

But because it’s emerging from Creation

Like a flower that offers fragrance

What I give’s my participation

Whether beautiful or ugly

Lyrically strong or suffering weakness

What I bring forth is what I’m called to give

From the Universe’s unlimited uniqueness

For if I don’t shine the light I’m given

I am a thief and what’s more a liar

And claiming that I am not received

Is no excuse for quenching fire

So call it what you will

I will do what I must do

My words may fail, but I won’t hold back

It might not be poetry, but it’s true

 

© Copyright 2015 Pedro S. Silva II

 

When I’m In Poetry Mode

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I have many states of being

Most of them conditioned

Circumstantial ways I am

Depending on my position

If I’m on top I am a certain way

If on the bottom I’m another

Each one relative to what’s going on

Which determines how I’m covered

But when I am in poetry mode

I’m not circumstantially dependent

I enter into a different realm

Where I am consciously transcendent

There’s no thing as linearity

Removing the cause of the effect

For when life turns into poetry

All frames of reference intersect

At the point of their convergence

We find the poem’s entrance into time

Emerging out of no where

Thus impossible to confine

Always open to interpreting

It’s expression has no end

And as the author I am one with it

So who can say where I begin

Perhaps the poetry created me

To bring itself to form

Pre-existing my corporeal self

A possibility outside the norm

Now I’m not just a person being

But an event within creation

Composed of seen and unseen forces

Forming a poetic destination

I’m not encountered but attended

Participation is a must

If you ever want to know me

Before I turn back into dust

For when I’m not in poetry mode

I am a man devoid of being

Processes functioning mechanically

With eyes that have no seeing

Here to do until I’m done

Trying to get my tasks complete

My meaning and my function one

Until I’m considered obsolete

Then I am replaced

With a newer model off the shelf

That’s why a life without being poetry

Is like living without a self

© Copyright 2015 Pedro S. Silva II