I wanted to write a blog
About poetry
And the New Year
And I thought it most appropriate
To do so in poem form.
With one disclaimer:
I may be poetic
But I am not a poet.
I discovered my love of poetry
During my senior year
Of high school
When I went to a poetry workshop
And witnessed a poetry read.
Where the poets performed their poetry
I felt each word delivered so
Passionately from their lips
Pull at my heart
I was in awe.
The year before I had taken AP Lit
Where I was force fed poetry
Bland old poetry that was too
Much like a jigsaw puzzle
And I’d have to write essays
Piecing together the poet’s intentions.
Looking for the edge piece similes
And seeing where the metaphors fit with the irony
The worst of it was that my teacher
Was a published poet.
I’m sorry.
But I don’t care about
Red wheelbarrows.
And I’ve read the lines
“I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference”
To the point where the words lose their savor.
That’s probably an exaggeration
Since I’m a big fan of Robert Frost.
But that day, where I saw the poets perform
It changed my view on poetry.
I looked into the modern stuff more
And fell in love with poetry.
I wanted to show it to everyone
I wanted them to watch these videos
Of slam poets reading their work
It was genius, pure genius.
However, some didn’t have the same
Reactions that I had.
They didn’t see what was so great
They didn’t feel the emotion,
The zeal
Behind the poems.
At first I didn’t understand how someone
With a heart
Couldn’t be touched by this stuff.
Poets have a way of
Describing the world.
They use art,
The power of words summoned from
A passionate heart.
They speak to the ears who won’t hear the words
But will feel them
With a similar heart.
On New Year’s Eve,
I went to my favorite used bookstore,
Where the female employees
Wear long glittery skirts
And the males wear their hair long
As if to say
“Hell yeah, I’m an artist”
And bought a brilliant book
Full of Spoken Word poetry
Genius in book form.
Later that evening,
As I sat watching the minutes tick by
Until the new year
I wrote a poem.
Ten minutes until 2011…
And really I don’t know what to think.
I know there’s supposed to be some sort of reminisce or
Reflection of the year gone by
But I can’t bring myself to think of
Anything.
I know I’m supposed to have some sort of list
Of goals for the next year
Which I know that I won’t keep
And this year I find myself at a blank.
Everything’s at a blank
When I Think about 2010…
It all seems like the bad stuff and maybe
A couple years from now I’ll look back at this moment
With fondness
But I can’t bring myself to think of
That.
I know I’m supposed to be excited for the new year
For the new adventures life supposedly throws at us
But I can’t help but see the new year
As just another day
And that someone at some time decided to put the
New year as
January 1 when in reality
it could have been February 23.
As long as it was the same year after year
Now there’s six minutes until 2011…
And I really don’t know what to think.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned
About poetry
It is that people see the world
In such diverse ways
Some people see the New Year
Differently than I do
Some people like poetry
Some people don’t
But I suppose that’s the beauty in it all.
Happy New Year
