Poetry is not the thesaurus in your hand,
it’s not the “magic” in your heart,
it’s not in what you drink,
how you act,
who you are,
what you do with your life.
It’s words on a page.
Being a poet isn’t any different than being a person.
Being a good poet isn’t any different than being a good person.
A good person doesn’t feel they are better than you,
no matter how differently you see the world.
When an artist can buy a stuffed animal from Wal-Mart and sell it to an art museum for thousands of dollars, untouched, why are we so proud of being “artists”?
I have an unfortunate truth for you.
Poetry is dead.
We are EMTs who’ve been performing CPR for decades now, and it don’t look like it’s coming back. There’s no magic to that, there’s no ghosts or ethereal essence.
Mourn your words because every poem is still-born and will never know the world like you do. And there is no incantation to bring them to life. No whiskey to drink, no clothes to wear, no places to write, nothing to write with, no books to read that will raise them.
You will not be read.
You will not be taught in schools.
You will not be paid for your words.
You will not be applauded.
You are having a break with reality and scrawling in your journal, pretending other people can see, can hear.
But it’s just you.
Just you.
Poetry is dead.
It’s words on a page.
We have a government that prefers to argue over act.
We have a debt, personal and national, that just keeps rising.
We have problems with racism, sexism, homophobia, bi-phobia, trans-phobia, a-phobia, able-ism, and more.
We have growing lines of division between those who have and those who don’t.
We have homeless vilified for being stubborn enough to survive when it’s obvious that no one else gives a fuck.
We are shoveled fear nightly and told it’s news.
We are told to vote on emotions rather than facts.
There is freedom in this.
More than there has any right to be.
We are forging new grounds,
but we aren’t path-finders.
There is no-one trailing behind.
You are not more important than me.
I am not more important than you.
And only we will know what we make.
There are no rules to follow,
no right or wrong,
and no one to complain we’re yelling too loud.
We are not artists.
We are not great.
We are architects of void.
