Poetry is . . .

It is emptying a brain that is getting to full. Slowly I start pulling the rope that is attached to the pail. In that pail are some kind of thoughts that are just wanting to be put on paper. Unfortunately some of the thoughts leak out of the pail on its way up. For if that damn pail could stay full just for one dipping and emptying. I, yes I, would surely have a ton of thoughts worthy of a book too. Alas my pail just like Georgie's has a hole in it.

The ephemeral essence of what makes life matter, captured in words, or rather an attempt to capture a dust devil in a jar, put it on a shelf, and watch it spin forever....

http://www.epinions.com/content_36102114948

"Outside the Law (What Makes Us Feel Good)"

Poetry is not supposed to rhyme.
Poetry is not supposed to be about dragons and rainbows.
Poetry is about spilling your raw emotions into the open air so they can be oxidized into words.
Poetry is not being afraid to spit in the face of the traditional rhyme,
the traditional rainbows,
and love
and life
and other things that tragically tend to go wrong.
Poetry doesn't cover up what is inside simply because what is inside may not make children giggle or 2nd grade teachers buy paperbacks en masse from Schoolastic.
Poetry explodes with a vibrant display of passion or an oppressive veil of death.
Poetry cannot be contained by what makes us feel good.

Poetry is not for us.
Poetry is for them.
It is for you.
It is for whomever decides to pick up a pen, a keyboard, a piece of chalk, a crayon, or a bleeding finger
and scrawl across some medium the essence of what makes him HUMAN
and ALIVE.

Our daily existence cannot be packaged nicely into a sweet chocolate shell like some 3-cent toy in a KinderEgg.
There is rot that must be expelled.
There are epidemics picking off our friends.
The guy who sold you tomatoes last week was stabbed to death in an alleyway last night for 23 bucks and half a pack of cigarettes.
The world is not pretty.
The world is not fairy tales with princesses and dragons and a set rhyme scheme and iambic pentameter.
Order is not an option.

There is no need for fluffy puppy dogs and dragons;
love at first sight;
dew drops on rose petals.
That sunshine can be blown up your ass on Sesame Street
or Poetry Dot Com.
This is the real thing, folks
This is the stuff that makes us tick,
that's on our minds.
This is the world as seen without our bullet-proof rose-colored glasses

Both scrawled in a pretty miserable time of my life when poetry was my only means of expulsion.

I've expanded my definitinon a little beyond that.

Originally posted by Radar(Baba)O'Riley
My butt hurts. I think my ass has been kicked. Thanks for the foot CranMalReign

No prob, mah man. Just saw this post and those two "offerings" sprung to mind. Didn't mean to put a damper on the whole thread. Like I said, I'm in a much better mood nowadays.

Originally posted by Radar(Baba)O'Riley
Cool. Did you write the review for the "Outlaw Book" too? Are you included in it?

Yah, I wrote that review. There was another review on there which really pissed me off. So my review was more of a retort to that tunnelvisioned review. Then I removed the censors and updated my review a little bit for my private purposes, since I had to edit myself for epinions.

And actually, CranMalReign is just a completely random name I came up with when I got banned from a message board for using "Nippleskin". I wonder if it has anything to do with the Cranberry Mall where I worked at the time?

Originally posted by coleen
i understand because i felt the same way myself. mind you i am not at the level as the rest of you but everyone here is very supportive and encouraging.

i really do hope you'll decide to share more with us in the future that was just some truly incredible work you laid on us.

Well, I'll keep a closer eye on this forum then, and contribute when I feel appropriate and comfortable. Keep a look out for me.

I'll take the emotive concept just a step further in saying that poetry is the literal metaphor for humanity.

When I write, it is all the things I would have said if I had the voice to do so. It is why no matter how many times I read my work, in my head it always sounds so correct, so apropos, though my voice cannot inflect the ennui that I propose.

I dream on the page. I fret, I nag, I worry the words as they go. Occasionally they burst furth as a supernova of lingual froth and I can barely control the pen or the typing hand, and it is they who hold the leash merely allowing me the sway as I sniff in the breeze. You have heard me say it before: I bleed.

Poetry is what all people would have said. There are people who read what we say and write and dream and do and say to themselves "why can I not do that? what is missing from me?" It is the quiet voice you must watch.

Poetry is self knowledge, however deprecating or even arrogant, it is true self on a page... if one is being honest. I believe false poetry to be easily seen from a distance and is therefore quickly discarded on approach.

Poets are artists in a window with glass planed through the soul.

Poetry is courage of word, thoughts that stay, opinions that may only matter briefly but to be remembered as long as the letters don't fade. Poetry is the art of realtime progression, a plotline that regards structure as a foundry, though limiting, and metaphor the freeing of caged captivity. Words are never as they seem and poetry is therefore proof that magic can exist.

People have asked me what I would do if all other things were taken from me...

I would write.

Yes, they say, but what if your writing was taken from you or lost?

I would die.

Poetry is my insanity on spread, my sanity enthralled. I am merely the conduit, the paper the lodestone, and all things flow through me. There is a force that contends me to write, compells me, to the point of wordlessness. I tend to babble, I am doing so now.

Poetry is and are the things I always wanted to say. I can tell someone that I love them better in a diary than I can in real life. I can relate fear or anticipation better on paper than in any ordinary conversation.

Oh there are the certain individuals, rare but true, that allow me to vent verbally as I do on the page, but I tend to get the wide-eyed-holy-shit-look-of-freak from most folks who hear me in such a state. I feel ashamed, as if I have been caught masturbating in public and then I feel angry because someone shat upon the thoughts that mean so much to me. Poetry is, therefore, self verification. These thoughts are mine and I share them because I feel that since they affect me so profoundly, there are times when my chest hurts I feel them so, that others MUST know, MUST be told. I cannot help it. It is my calling.

If ever I lost my hands, I would truly invent telepathy.

I now have the burn, I can feel the pain in my heart and the rise of the blood pressure as my mind seeks to find the volcanic plug and reduce it to ash here and now. I could go for days. I have gone for days.

This place... to find receptive eyes for the words that come to mine... I don't know what I would have done without it. I have written some of my best work in honor of those on this board and many times with the thought, admittedly, of trying desperately to blow people's minds, mine included. I wanted to write better than I ever have, say more things and mean more things than I ever have...

Funny thing is, I don't know if I've succeeded or not. I am very particular and sooner or later I may look at this work I've done and say to myself, it could have been better.

Even if it was all for love.

LOL Poetry is frustration. This, here, all of us, you, me, we go outside and smell the world, those cracks in the sidewalks you can feel if you concentrate, right through your shoes... the ability to watch someone from across the room and KNOW them, make love to them with your mind... stepping aside on the sidewalk as someone approaches and knowing that the rest of your day may forever be altered because of it...

I cannot... I don't....

It's all poetry. Every last drop. And I suppose this was my page on which to breathe.

Originally posted by Radar(Baba)O'Riley
Yeah, happy phantom!

I saw that.