Poetry Manifesto

a poem.

a po - em.

Po is red, but that’s as

irrelevant as an elephant walking along

and scaring a bear.

Po likes trees, but that’s not why it’s called poetry.

em: em for M, for ’em, but never ’im,

yet an em for your aunt while your uncle gets a hen-

read the fine print, that’s a twister!

be careful not to twist

her, though, or she’ll

 

Tie you to a kitchen chair,

Break your throne and cut your hair,

And from your lips

 

you get the picture.

 

rainbows are lovely!

an arc of colour crossing the crystal sky is

the smile of Heaven upon

you:

a single crosx, you’re blessed, a double croxx, you’re divine,

while a half crx makes you a schmuck,

as you don’t deserve the whole smile.

the starry vault in the night sky

bears equal beauty when the

pollution of capitalism doesn’t cloud over it.

but that’s just proof that everything-

e-ver-y-thing

on the face of our problematic planet is

worthy of poetic treatment so long as you

cultivate it.

 

a poem is a flower:

it needs sun, it needs water,

the beat of your heart, the voice of your soul,

the care and diligence to eradicate weeds,

or you’d have a graveyard of a garden in your wake,

and that’s jarring! jar-

ring; a jar in a ring,

is that a thing?

only if you make it if you break

it down with virtuosity.

 

an accomplished poem of formless design falls dead

 

silent

 

there’s no such thing as a form-

less poem, for you don’t choose poetry,

poetry chooses you;

you don’t act on poetry,

poetry acts on you;

your only power lies in collaboration,

but in the grand scheme of things

that’s as irrelevant as an elephant

hatching an egg, simply because

for every thousand readers of your work

only one - one; the loneliest number-

actually understands what’s going on.

everyone else has been conditioned into subjectivity

by what they’ve heard, and by extension

what they’ve imagined the poet to be.

 

Is that suddenly how we’re judging quality?

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

 

anger that doesn’t sing is just anger;

sorrow that doesn’t croon is just heartache.

if you don’t sing, no one would hear you,

but they do anyway, because there’s always

one line that grabs them with the overdone emotion

tagged onto it, even though a poem is not

just the one line!

a poem is the voice, the body, the echo - echo - echo -

Rococo and Baroque are ba-

roken, but that doesn’t make them useless.

those who have no use

for the old shall have no understanding

of the new. 

They pine for their bonny

with a hey nonny nonny

when it’s skip to my Lou, my darling!

they clearly don’t have a Lou but a loo as their darling-

this guy looks like he hasn’t used a loo

 

in five years;

 

this gal is talking out of her elbows,

because her tongue is tied and her bowels

under the pressure of all the force

now churn out bloody and disfigured words.

the key is not to excrete but

exude!

yet instead of really going la-di-da-di-da,

they all go mm mm ahh.

 

poetry is the art of mastering time

(you master form, you master time),

of duelling with….

hush- listen- experience-

it’s all about the progress

between the lines, through

the stanzas;

the onward impulse that plays the onward impulse of life itself-

the embryo of creation in the firmament of

the respiratory system,

the nervous system,

the endocrine;

the seed of the spirit that makes your body move.

 

so if poetry is not as natural as leaves to a tree,

every leaf intertwining with the lines of its branches,

untapping the sap from the roots to the crown-

best nothing happen at all.

-EDP

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

the branches on a tree blow every which way in the wind, the poet writes poetry in a wind tunnel of intense creative velocity...and the words blow every which way as well.
Poetry does write itself, we basically are the conduits...
I like how your opening separates the words into syllables, roots, definitions of each part, and then how your ending brings this altogether.

We write we exhale words....
You write and exude such talent ...I think I might be the bear that elephant scared...
I think the prints are on my page.
j.

[emipoemi]

"we basically are the conduits" - that's what I've been saying for the longest time, and no one seems in want to listen. There's more to poetry than the mere regurgitation of words - there is exhalation involved; there is exudation at work. Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading (the elephant and the bear is a reference to a children's book for a bit of absurdity, so no is exactly the elephant or the bear, but if you think you are, that's your interpretation).

[Annette Pisano-Higley]

the embryo of creation in the firmament of
the respiratory system,
the nervous system,
the endocrine;
the seed of the spirit that makes your body move
so if poetry is not as natural as leaves to a tree,
every leaf intertwining with the lines of its branches,
untapping the sap from the roots to the crown-
best nothing happen at all."
Sorry, not meaning to be redundant here, but simply honoring lines as brilliant as the poet who lives them. Speaking under, speaking above, speaking to explain, to permeate a density that pervades these troubling times... A poet cannot devise a poem, a poet can simply allow it to channel and speak itself from the glorious ethers. My take. Kudos.

[emipoemi]

And your take hit the nail on the head. Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading.

[Annette Pisano-Higley]

Happy, Healthy, Hopeful Holidays and a much better New Year wished for you and yours!:))

[emipoemi]

Thanks. Likewise.

[barleygirl]

This is one of the most extensive examples of a poet SHOWING thru writing what the message of the poem looks like. Maybe some of us have our own poetry manifesto (gotta love that title!) but we'd still be a little tempted to take a few swigs of what you're howling about. This is vigorous thinking translated into lively writing -- what every poet aspires to, I would imagine -- and that's why the SHOW instead of tell value is off the charts! Here's hoping your Christmas week is equally lively & hopefully with some togetherness (((HUGS))) Fondly, Margie

[emipoemi]

Thank you so much, Margie. I wrote this as I'm still trying to speak out against the capitalist desecration of art, and that the poetry that's published is suited to a fad that knows nothing about what poetry is, and that is sacrilege. But here I am, just talking to the wind and the wall (for the most part), as no one really notices me when I do try to join the conversation; when I do try to start these conversations - still waiting on an answer from the guy whose quotes I used a few times throughout this piece).

Glad you enjoyed it. Hope you could benefit from it. Thanks for reading.

[barleygirl]

A friend brought me a box of popular books at Thanksgiving & now I've managed to read at least a little of everything in the box. Whew! That was an effort of love for my friend, not for the books. Such boring rubbish is being published these days. I think I've told you this before about how bored I am with most formula novels.

[emipoemi]

If you haven't read them yet, might I recommend 5 to 1 (by Holly Bodger; a novel in verse that KNOWS what it's doing - it's also half prose, but it's done masterfully). The Mothers (by Brit Bennett - The Vanishing Half is pretty good too, but I don't think she pulled that one off as nicely). The Shadow of the Wind (by Carlos Ruiz Zafón - long, but it takes you for a ride; Zafón is a fantastic writer, despite his earlier work being kind of meh). To Bury Our Fathers (by Sergio Ramirez, translated by Nick Caistor - historical fiction about the Sandinista conflict in Nicaragua that's really about the characters, and Caistor's prose as he translated is uf; utter brilliance).

[barleygirl]

Good titles always welcome! Thanks for sharing!