“A poet is only as good

as their definition of poetry”

That’s what I said!

Oh folly, how thou art bound to me so!

Whence shall I be free of thine woes?

For I look and I see, and behold I am blind!

Wisdom taketh mine hand, be mine sight, be mine guide!

——

Define poetry then, fool!

What is it?

Man spitting words to paper,

sickly, inky drivel clinging to his chin?

Stomach bursting and brimming with

words, yearning to escape and so live?

Or call it a soul etching darkest of stone,

so that when it is finished it will go on and glow;

or a dream sent to man that he couldn’t perceive—— that now screams in his mind and deprives him of sleep;

or a moment in time that has never quite come, like a tune from beyond that the clocks learned to hum;

or a feast among famine, a dining of air, whence we pull out our tongues— we behold they aren’t there;

or a row of gravestones, having each one a casket, where all words are laid down—— and we grieve; though we mask it;

or a fire, a flame, a burning desire,

just to say—— God to say!—— something to take us higher;

or a man without ears who can hear well as day, all the angel’s sweet verse, words that he’ll fail to say;

or a cesspool of rot within man and our thought, which we drown in forever by the words that we wrought;

or a series of words which we wake from our veins, and with care (or without), we so put them to page;

the latter is best,

as words have no need for dress,

be they simple or haughty

they look well to our flesh