As a Poet

For all my fellow poets and writers and critics.

As a Poet

 

As a poet my job is too feel

Every spasm of a useless situation

And to document a reality in its most abstract form

To commit sins where practical people prefer not to belong

 

As a poet I need to memorize the procedures

And modus operandi of living and dying

Simultaneously in many different forms

People expect me to create an illusion of the known

And call it unknown in their own known language

 

As a poet I must learn to infuse snowfall

In a famine and drought, light a cigarette in a oscillating

Sea storm with my final matchstick, sing songs with

The best devils in town; sleep with sick women

And impress the beautiful ones with act of being profound

 

I must live only with the hollowness of my own being

Marry the harshness of my silent sentences

And die when others around me have finished enjoying

The final chop of criticizing my human habits and

Normal

Ways and methods I use to get around the city streets

 

As a poet I’m at least sometimes allowed to be a regular human

In a horde of otherwise excused wordless normal people.

 

Author's Note

This is an unusual poem from me, I know. Hardly any visual effect or onomatopoeia. But this my uttermost personal form of existential confession. Hope you'd like it.

Reviews

[Mike Espinosa]

This is an interesting poem. You come across and sincere in your description of who you are.

However, your breaks feel a bit awkward in some of the stanzas. When I read the breaks, I am cutting off in the middle of phrases that shouldn't be. I stumbled a few times through this piece because of the breaks. The one that I suggest immediate edit is in the second to last stanza, "The final chop of criticizing my human habits and / Normal / Ways and methods I use to get around the city streets."

Also, if you are going to use a period at the end of the poem, you should use punctuation throughout, as a matter of uniformity. Either whole poem with punctuation or whole poem without. Half and half seems a little sloppy.

Overall, this is a fine poem. Good job.

[Christopher.Holmberg]

This is a very well written piece of work.

[JB Murray]

A great write! I enjoyed the awkwardness within the verses, it's "chopiness" as it were. And I have to confess, I might just have to steal the lines...

"sing songs with, The best devils in town; sleep with sick women
And impress the beautiful ones with act of being profound"

and drop them in a one of the many songs I'm currently working on, or write a whole new one based on that statement alone...lol. Great job again! As always, look forward to more!
P.S. I wish you'd write some garbage for once, just so I can say it's garbage lolol!

[EMW]

This made me stop and think about a poet. what you said in this is true. You have to learn differend things. Memeorize information. Live how you choose to live. You define yourself as a poet and don't necessarily let people influence you entirely.

[JENY]

Wow…
Excellent….
Very true thoughts….
I have no words to say more…..

[122009]

"As a poet I’m at least sometimes allowed to be a regular human
In a horde of otherwise excused wordless normal people. "

I think it's so interesting that you made a dividing line between poets and "normal people". I've never read a poem like this before, and you definitely did a great job in your descriptions.

[Tate Morgan]

now this is really good

[Anicca]

I loved it.. I cant tell you what it was about this piece that I adore because I honestly dont know... I just know that it was good.

[R.S. Wilder]

Oh my goodness.... Huh.... Well (sighs). Isn't this something else. You should be knighted "Sir" Ishan Sadwelkar, because this is - huh.

[Desert Dreamer]

I like these confessions of a poet, and I really like the way you have left the word "Normal" alone on a line as if to place significance on this word. It is the job of the poet to go to places where everyone else does not go, and to see the world with a different set of eyes. I like your poem.

[MattVoscinar]

I like this poem, not for its subject, but the ideas in it.

I've read a lot of poems where the poet lists what he/she must do. It is refreshing though to have someone bring out the ideas you have.

"As a poet I need to memorize the procedures
And modus operandi of living and dying
Simultaneously in many different forms
People expect me to create an illusion of the known
And call it unknown in their own known language"

This is excellent. The only thing I would change is take out the second "known" to make it more crisp.

What I didn't like was how you ended the piece. It was awkward and a very light touch of what you could've done, comparing the poet to the rest of society.