hear me out
hear
me
out
[i don’t know if it reads — the first line being
one to a general audience
where i don’t even know what i’m going to say
or, perhaps, why i’m going to say it,
but the second stanza
is me
to me
desperately pleading
though i still don’t know
what subject matter
i just want myself
to hear what i have to say
i need myself
to hear what
i have
to say]
grand plans
for so many poems
but the attention span
to leave as soon as they’re started
pretend
for a moment
you don’t know where you came from
or to what you’re going
or even any established rules
about your own identity
or the world at large and little
and you go to craft a poem —
would you know what words to use
would you innately be aware of rules and parameters
poetry has to work around and within
or would you just write what was in your soul
even if the words in your soul had no words at all?
and would that still be poetry?
[i think so]
all these scraps of songs
portions of poems
i’ve written in fits and starts
bursts of energy
of creativity
of enlightened states of being
just to fizzle out
after one verse
one chorus
one instance
of what i truly want to say
and have nowhere to go
no how-to-end-it
no place to place my hat up on the wall and say
“i’m satisfied with my words”
maybe
it would help
if i were to write poetry
by hand
again
[would it really, tho?]
interesting when i write a poem
and can feel the subject matter/concept
has something there, but that the poem itself
is a rough rough rough first draft, like i know
i’ll have to re-write and maybe even re-re-write
but the subject
and a few lines
of this first try
are usable
and i don’t feel the overwhelming failure
that a ‘not good enough’ poem usually brings me,
because this is simply an opportunity
to write it out better/more accurate/in a way that everyone
might
identify with me and understand.
if only i knew what i wanted to write about/
if only i didn’t start hundreds of poems
immediately after closing up the morning poetry page/
if only i could access all the unfinished lines in my mind
from last night and prior nights
going back years and decades
and mine them for inspiration for today
now
this morning//
but instead i find myself sitting and staring/
and hoping and despairing/
and writing about writing
and random morning things
[maybe, every few weeks, i should actively make morning poetry
into nighttime poetry
and see what happens
then]
it was actually fairly nice
yesterday —
working on a big poem
between rest
and embroidery
and silly television feeds
to make us feel
not quite 100% of the sadness we feel
daily —
there is something to be said for
working hard
on something,
and i did that,
i can do that.
[maybe i am an adult after all]
the simplicity today
is still so simple
it’s not making larger ideas
blossom
in front of my eyes/
it’s making my blood boil and rise
at the fact that i
cannot seem to focus long enough
to make poetry i’m proud of
maybe tomorrow
[maybe even later today]
do past poets
ever view todays’
as cheaters?
“i never had rhyming dictionaries
back in my day…”
“the whole of human knowledge
at your fingertips
and this drivel
is what you come up with???”
good thing
i don’t believe in an afterlife
otherwise
i’d be worried
about generations of past poets behind me
judging my work
instead of simply all of humanity
from now going forward…
kipventures 