Love Or Poetry
I know now that love, not poetry, will save me
From your blessed injuries, your uneven surfaces,
Your deviant forms and targeted marketing; and
Not just love, but any love, will do – various
As all get out; love of whomever, by anything
Or anyone is the get out of jail card required, free
As every player of Monopoly knows (on the nose,
Write it on the nose); poetry has been a killer
Of children, and the old; it has been in a sorry state
Of late; it hurts what touches it; it congeals
Habits that are poor, shows generosity the door.
The sun is a good example of love, when out;
When obscured by clouds, that’s poetry society:
Lowering, glowering, scouring, causing some to
Cower. Love opens a bower of roses no winter
Can annoy or dislodge; love forgives, pardons,
And cajoles merely to improve. Poetry judges,
Decides, and awards. Sets up a moon in the place
Of the sun, elected by its Parnassian buddies,
Chortles in crisscrossed darkness, calling shadows
Swords, beams of the moon rays of pure gold.
I bleed on poetry’s knife-crime statistics, cut
Like a line that doesn’t work. It won’t open out
Like love will. Poetry mutters, scuttles, rebuts.
I strut now in bars of sure sheer sun, unashamed
Of my lack of poetry. I swoon to swim in prose.
I love what this lack of tortured syntax means;
It means I can go waste my life being ordinary.
I know now that love, not poetry, will save me
From your blessed injuries, your uneven surfaces,
Your deviant forms and targeted marketing; and
Not just love, but any love, will do – various
As all get out; love of whomever, by anything
Or anyone is the get out of jail card required, free
As every player of Monopoly knows (on the nose,
Write it on the nose); poetry has been a killer
Of children, and the old; it has been in a sorry state
Of late; it hurts what touches it; it congeals
Habits that are poor, shows generosity the door.
The sun is a good example of love, when out;
When obscured by clouds, that’s poetry society:
Lowering, glowering, scouring, causing some to
Cower. Love opens a bower of roses no winter
Can annoy or dislodge; love forgives, pardons,
And cajoles merely to improve. Poetry judges,
Decides, and awards. Sets up a moon in the place
Of the sun, elected by its Parnassian buddies,
Chortles in crisscrossed darkness, calling shadows
Swords, beams of the moon rays of pure gold.
I bleed on poetry’s knife-crime statistics, cut
Like a line that doesn’t work. It won’t open out
Like love will. Poetry mutters, scuttles, rebuts.
I strut now in bars of sure sheer sun, unashamed
Of my lack of poetry. I swoon to swim in prose.
I love what this lack of tortured syntax means;
It means I can go waste my life being ordinary.
poem by Todd Swift;
photo by Madeleine Waller
Comments
I don't know that love and poetry will save me
From the swords and wands of technicolour lips
The slang of unthinking force or exhaust pipes.
An April fool today, I care less about the judges
Than the poem itself, how it rests in the throat
And the soul, more than words or rhymes
Or clever ropes, the poem is still primeval
As the love that makes that gutteral sound.
For those whose birthdays fall on Easter
Can not waste their prose on ordinary
Swagger while their thoughts by default
Will still elevate the rose.