Poetry

A bit of rambling. It makes sense to me, but, then again, I wrote it. It's about poetry, and words, and what they mean, and what they can mean, and how poetry is written... or can be written.

There’s a certain sensuality in poetry that cannot be avoided. To make poetry is to create, for God made the heavens and the Earth, and yes even man, though some may debate these facts, through poetry; poiesis. And because words are representative symbols of things we feel and see here on earth, a poem’s texture, the way it feels in your mouth and the way the rhythm plays with your ears and your tongue, and your mind, you can’t forget the mind; mouth, ear, tongue, and mind, all very sensual parts of the body, all of which are used in the creative process and verbalisation of poetry, represents the texture of the earth, and the texture of the self in regards to the earth and all that’s within it. Poetry is meant to be felt, poetry is meant to excite the senses, but poetry does more than just make images in your mind, poetry poses a question, always, poetry is always asking its reader and its hearer a question. What are you reading, what are you hearing, what do you see, am I a poem or am I life, are you reading me or are you writing me, what is it that I’m saying? Am I asking that or are you asking that? A poem is always asking questions. Poetry is in the guts. Poetry is visceral. That sentence is just repeating the one previously written, it means the same thing, just as that clause is repeating the clause previously written and so on and henceforth. These symbols are representing, these symbols represent. But what is it that they represent? Each other. So on and henceforth these symbols, though they look different, are all the same thing. No not just words, for a word describes what these symbols are, not what they mean. Is what I am speaking a poem? Do you get what I’m saying? Poetry is in the guts. Poetry is visceral. And poetry is creating through representation. Therefore you are writing what I am saying, because what I am saying is just representative of what is in my head, and you read these words as they are represented in your own head. If I say death, I picture Emily Dickenson, I picture the Devil, I picture funerals and black clothing, and corpses, and hammers, and wet grass and the smell of soil and muddy shoes, and a taxation office. When I write a poem I don’t say all those things. I say death. And that is what I see. And if I say death is life, I pose two very opposing forces found on this earth against each other and with each other at the same time. I pose God and the Devil, I pose corpses and living bodies, I pose stinking rotting flesh and the beauty of the curvature of a women’s face, against each, and with each other at the same time. Is this not life? A fight? Is this not death? Strangely beautiful, yet frightening? And maybe, when I say all these words previously spoken, I think poetry.