“MY COLORLESS SOLITUDE”
As my skeptical mind wonders
How many out there can really write
poetry
Versus how many think they can
And make you and me believe it
for our brains don’t understand.
Damn, I think I just rhymed
That’s not how real bards do it.
Rhyming is for dilettantes; ne’er for them auteurs
Because modern poetry
is not about rhyme
What it also isn’t about
is reason.
It’s not conventional, for convention is passé
As long as we are the same kind of different
But of a different kind, all the same.
Some lines are excruciatingly long, like the never-ending brook, a meandering rivulet, the labyrinth of thoughts, an abyss of bad metaphors
Others, short.
It’s about variations in the lengths of its various lines
For variations give
it form.
And form, character.
Sentences.
Incomplete
sentences like these
make for complete
lines. An odd break
here.
(Also, every ‘here’ need not always have a ‘there.’)
An enveloping verb, an earthy adjective
Incongruous phrases
like “my colorless solitude.”
With a hint of pathos – melancholy to be precise,
And a paradox thrown in
For what can be more telling, than the sorrow of a smile?
Just vague enough
as you wonder if it makes sense
Yet, teasing with apparent profundity
so you hesitate to call out its absurdity,
Out of fear – fear that it’ll show
you’re not nearly as intellectual, you know
Besides, something so dark and vague must have to do
with that arcane thing
they chose to call…“Life.”
Do I have it all covered? Do my lines represent me?
Or does my verse only make it worse? (Sorry; just had to be pathetic, you see.)
Arcane, noir, vague check.
Profound, paradox, pathos check.
Form check. Character check.
So it is, in all its depth and profundity
And unnecessary redundancy,
My poetry, a glimpse of the real me
A hint of aura, a touch of mystery.
The dark side, the light side, and all things I believe
myself to be. Exactly
like how you believe yourself to be.
You and I, we’re not so different, don’t you see?
But for the fact
that one of us
writes terrible poetry.
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