I know a lot of words:
long, short, mellifluous, staccato, emotive, terse,
presumptuous, profane,
and punctuation marks to connect them.
They can tell all kinds of stories,
teach all kinds of things.
I can twist them into some shapes, like
a feather to tickle a funny bone
a stick to prod a spleen
an onion to draw out a tear.
(just the one)
I am a competent craftsperson, but I'm not a magician.
I cannot make
an arrow to pierce a soul
a hammer to smash an ideal
a scalpel to cut out a heart
a boot to stomp on it
a fire to burn away the leavings
a potion to restore it all
the way a poet can.
I also have words that obfuscate,
like when "I don't like this" means
"I don't understand this and I suspect it is beyond me, and I am jealous."
Like when I say "I'm not really into poetry,"
because I suspect that
poets
are wizards
and
poems
are magic.
Am I a poet and I didn’t even know it? I am not, although I have written my fair share of novelty haiku. Am I fishing for a bunch of “But look, you did write a poem!” comments? I am not. Don’t leave one.
All that happened here was this: a friend — the rare kind of friend you make when you click with someone and they immediately insinuate themselves into your life and vice versa although you barely know each other — wrote a poem. She writes many. She does not show them to people, but she showed one to me; I don’t know why, but I’m so glad she did. It made me feel all kinds of feelings. It embiggened me. And then the above fell out.
Will I write other poems? Novelty haiku, for sure. Others, I have no idea. Probably not, unless another one falls out of the sky and bonks me on the head and makes me cough one up. (Is this what “organic process” means?) But it doesn’t matter, because the point is not to become a poet, the point is that now I have this thing to commemorate a really lovely moment and a blog to put it on, so.
We will return to our regularly scheduled programming of thoughts I had at 4am shortly.
King of States! 