My Brand of Poetry

That’s the thing about me though –

I don’t really write the way I’m supposed to write.

Academics probably can’t scan my work so easily

and find cohesive narratives or

thematic categories to file my poetry into.

A poet really isn’t supposed to write about poetry

let alone explain what he writes while he’s writing it

to the reader as he tries to figure out if this is a joke

or something different I should pay attention to

or put it down because I can’t figure it out.

There’s nothing to figure out.

Poetry should make you feel something.

Sometimes it’s all those cliché things we think it is

when we think about poetry like watery streams and tear-drops

and snowflakes and sunsets and relationships

and sometimes it’s a jagged piece of wood running across your shoulder-blade.

Try to understand, for me it’s not really conscious

or even stream-of-consciousness but something completely

alien to ordinary life,

and because of that more true to real life as I experience it.

Here:

It’s the glance you exchange with the person in the coffee shop,

the one you see and who sees you and who you don’t talk to

but are flooded with an impression of a thousand thoughts

and feelings and smells and characters

for a brief moment in time as you fiddle in your pocket for change

and wonder something about them,

all the while trying to look normal.

That’s poetry – it’s the magic of the ordinary.

All the rest is far too academic and intellectual

to even come close to touching its essence.