still life in motion

---

poetry - cartoon channel architecture

I sometimes feel a need to disjoint myself. I don't smoke weed, it does strange and sometimes scary things to my brain, like sending me on 6 second memory loops where i think about the thing i thought just a few seconds earlier. Or believing a secret clandestone goverment unit is after me because I'm a shit stirring rebel, and how will I escape? Better are the gossamer veils where snow flakes tinkle as wind chimes when they connect with the earth, or trees which dance in the wind like fey creatures under a full moon.

---

---

Poetry is similar to writing down stoned thoughts. You need to think and feel and see in a different way, to create a perspective not many people consider yet can identify as a honing sense deep within their bones.

I tend to look at some of the poetry I see posted in Steemit as a tinged grey scale shadow of art, because most is not what i consider poetry in the true sense of the word. I even include myself in that grey scale, because I tend to look for quality above quantity. At times an attempt at poetry yields a clever play on words or an artistic style that mimics the art, but it seems that many writers just plop lines together in short line verse or rhyme without considering the intent, the flow or the artistic spell of repetition, intonation, intensity and style.

---

---

The recent trend is to peel off disjointed phrases, hope they make beauty in abstract landscapes; to riddle the non poetic believer in discontinuous verse. Even though accessibility is over-rated, throwing a bunch of nonsense together isn't always poetry. If everyone reads a poem and comes to the same conclusion about intent and meaning because there is only one way to interpret the words, or fails to even draw a conclusion at all as they stumble over ill placed punctuation and a plethora of and, the, those, and its, then in my humble opinion, the purpose of poetry has not been met. Simplify. Focus.

---

---

The role of a good poet is to make what might seem like random thought feel meaningful, mime the modern world to create a stream of meaning out of one line fragments. Poetry for the sake of one-up-manship might be clever and witty, yet it lacks longevity as it rambles on in esoteric or trite phrases that lack cohesion and purpose. Where are you going to? Can you cut the noise so we fly instead of lumber?

---

a kiss
she
kissed
as if she,
alone,
could forge
the signature
of the sun.

~ saul williams, excerpt;
", said the shotgun to the head."

---

Poems may tell a story in a way people can recall easily. They might illustrate an emotion with symbolic images, or an idea with specific details. The poem asks questions that seldom few ponder without directive.

---

Seven men
on the streets
for every woman. my heart hides below
this headscarf and
my waistline may never see sunshine.
These women are like church spires,
piercing
and falling back again,
piercing
and falling back again.
Does your wife stop at the edge of her skin?
Is she dry and cracked,
fragments of the Koran drifting across her eyelids like cataracts?

~ Caronae Howell, excerpt from "Sixteen Fragments of Islam"

---

Poetry can be sparse or expanding, coarse or refined, however it should be focused, concise and explicit, like a good argument on paper that is bereft of tangential asides, unclear prepositions or trite clichés. Poetry can be fun and witty with rhymes and gimmicks, or serious and cutting, the exposing of a fleshy fruit within the thick skin of social mores.

---

---

But please please... do not make it common. or lackluster. Do not allow poetry to fail when it attempts to peel back a layer of your skin. Do not let it exhort an unwilling response for lack of wit or clarity. Let words flow free with imagination and beauty, to light up the sky with color and purpose, to cast spells of wonder as we dissect meaning from an ant trudging up a sand dune in the Sahara desert.

Contemplate the sound of one hand clapping, the smell of lichen on the open sea, or the meaning of a koan; a japanese symbol that has several different connotations. When you can reach the height of a goose as it soars over the Himalayas, describe what it is to fly.

---

---

_{orange is pixabay CC stock photo; other photos original and or edited by by torico in ddg}

---

if you enjoyed this post please check out my other work:

photography

buggies
color challenge monday red
color challenge sunday purple
discourse - a photo prose essay
fairy wind flowers
friday blue abstract
good morning photo
goodnight world
green goodness
photoart
playing with the dream thingie- a DDG series
rust never sleeps
sunflare and goodnight
torico's randomly strange photos
van gogh's pony
wildflowers in NM

writing

a murder of one
buffalo waiting
ethical writing
london calling
on writing the superhero
torico's list
the dysfunctional friend
wildfires and climate change

poetry

aging
alchemy
an offbeat ode to fuck
art of fetch
binding
birdsong
creation
crimes and punishment
fight
fine art of madness
four legged religion
geist
hard candy
irreparable
listen
liquid
mysteries of the art world
the noise in my apartment
remover
school
the coast of me
what i meant was

---