#2- Treatise on Sea Monsters.

On searching for what is or isn't.

When I was a child, I loved 

All those shows

About Bigfoot, and Ghosts, and Aliens.

Ever loving the hunt. 

The chase.

The search.

The possibility of something unknown.

The fantasy. 

The conspiracy.

The mystery and intrigue.

And the promise of what might reveal itself

At the end of the hour--or two. 

 

But nothing ever did so.

For years and years.

Nothing would show.

 

I grew older and jaded.

Clinical. 

Cynical.

To my friends and others, 

Somewhat shallow.  Detached.

“There’s no such thing as magic in this world,”

I would say, safe in my assertion 

And mask.

“Improbable."  "Impossible.”

Because Bigfoot, and Ghosts, and Aliens

Were just fantasies and fictions.

To be taken at face value.

There's nothing inside.

 

But in private, I kept watching 

All those shows.

About Bigfoot, and Ghosts, and Aliens.

Silent, secretly longing.

The hope.

The wish.

The possibility of being all wrong.

The fantasy. 

The conspiracy.

The mystery and intrigue.

And the promise of what might reveal itself

In a world outside reason--alone. 

 

But bitter and detached, I waited. 

For the promise

At the end of the TV special.

That never came. 

No matter how much I wanted.

Dreamed and desired.

Not until I had given up ever finding

What I wanted, inside.

 

But shortly after grad school,

The winter of twenty-fifteen

I won’t forget.

As I got ready to move on with my life.

I saw a most curious development 

On the net.

 

"Impossible!"  "Improbable!"

A monster of the darkened deep

Once legend, now real,

Had emerged from an eldritch sleep.

Though scientists knew, they never saw

More than parts and pieces,

If it was objectively real at all.

 

Years, we sent expeditions

Probing into the silence.

With cameras, and robots.

And all the trappings of science.

To quantify the thing that had eluded us so.

Again and again, we would go.

 

But who would have expected,

Certainly not I,

That the Kraken would come to us?

And look Man in the eye?

 

Not a titan or monster.

No impossible god.

Just a lost child, pushed to shore.

Alone and likely scared,

Like so many are.

 

But with caring and tenderness,

The fishermen led her back to sea.

A brief moment, in parting,

That shook something deep within me.

 

“Perhaps Bigfoot, and Ghosts, and Aliens 

Are real after all?”

 

I met you not a year later, Miss,

Still nursing the scars from another.

In this new world of mystery and intrigue,

Hiding the heart on my sleeve.

But this time, thought I,

Of the creature of the deep, inside.

"This time,

Maybe, 

It’s okay 

To believe."

Author's Note

Still new to writing poetry. I know nothing about meter and rhyming or how to really do any of that effectively without it sounding canned or forced.

Also, if you didn't catch it, this is in reference to the juvenile giant squid that entered a Japanese harbor on its own--among other things, more pressing on my mind as of late.

Reviews

[Ash]

'Understanding Poetry,' by Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D. To fully understand poetry, we must first be fluent with its meter, rhyme and figures of speech, then ask two questions: 1) How artfully has the objective of the poem been rendered and 2) How important is that objective? Question 1 rates the poem's perfection; question 2 rates its importance. And once these questions have been answered, determining the poem's greatness becomes a relatively simple matter. If the poem's score for perfection is plotted on the horizontal of a graph and its importance is plotted on the vertical, then calculating the total area of the poem yields the measure of its greatness. A sonnet by Byron might score high on the vertical but only average on the horizontal. A Shakespearean sonnet, on the other hand, would score high both horizontally and vertically, yielding a massive total area, thereby revealing the poem to be truly great. As you proceed through the poetry in this book, practice this rating method. As your ability to evaluate poems in this matter grows, so will, so will your enjoyment and understanding of poetry."

Excrement. That's what I think of Mr. J. Evans Pritchard. We're not laying pipe. We're talking about poetry. How can you describe poetry like American Bandstand? "Oh, I like Byron. I give him a 42, but I can't dance to it."

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are all noble pursuits, and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for

Ten points if you can tell me what all that is from, and more to the point, there is no right or wrong. Yes, there is meter, and rhyme and all the things hammered into our heads in school about what proper poetry is supposed to be, but if that is feeling forced and canned just write. Don't worry about rhyme and meter. Throw the rules out the window and just freely write. If all that enters your mind is that "apples are better than oranges" then write about that. If you are ecstatic because the sun is shining or you scored a fantastic parking space, write about that. Just let the the words flow freely from your mind onto the paper without worrying about whether it is "proper poetry" of not. Just make it honest and unapologetically you!!

[roses]

I thought it was very well written. I enjoyed the story. I would also say write however you like. Writing is an art, like painting or music. It's subjective and meant to be original and creative.