Dwelling.

Poetry is meant to be tasted, called beloved,
summoned when you have dotted lines on
your wrist drawn from a Sharpie you're thinking
of replacing with a knife.

Poetry isn't just pretty words, it's more than
one definition of beautiful. It's the raw beauty
that scabs over, the love kept inside, blistering
over so many are repulsed but only the blind
realize what it means...

what beauty does.

How it makes us dig for our hearts, pull ourselves
into then out of a trench still reminiscent of World
Wars and the safety stolen away ever since that
night we couldn't say, "not now".

Poetry is scars.

See, lately I've been feeling like my body is
caged by a barbed wire fence I built with my own
subconscious, for when I look for thorns or nails
I notice perfectly healthy skin and it makes me
throw myself into a corner of an anxiety attack.

I bring this on myself... which is why poetry
is the ugliness, the ultimate site of carnage
where you were named worthless, invisible,
hypocrite, hater, hatred itself.

Poetry is not meant to be contently read.
If that's what you're searching for, then go ahead,
I will hand you a round red delicious apple
and you can leave quenched, juices dripping from
your closed lips
as I open my mouth and show you what rots...
not the apple dear.

These images are copied again and again
from scribes who lament what truth we hold
within, so when our eyes are gifted with color,
it's never the soul-bearing reality.
It's always bright, happy, what color suits us.

But poetry isn't a suit to fit us.
There is no certain size we must keep trying
on, buy hesitantly then take back, shrugging
and saying, "It just didn't work."

Poetry is what runs through every alleyway
of our being, what we seek and what we don't
admit, what we leap toward and leap from,
poetry is on the move from Bulgaria to
Africa to the Galapagos...

poetry is silent and loud and clashes like
toddlers mixing pots, pans, and selfless dreams.

It dwells within and when we can't identify
ourselves, it becomes an identity to silently
try to understand.

-
Written Saturday, July 27, 2013 @ 10:30 PM
Kind of slam poetry I guess you could say! I was inspired to write after watching videos of slam poetry on Youtube, and letting the words flow.. and wrote about poetry itself, how it doesn't always have to talk about the "good things in life", it talks about pain and can reach the hearts of many.