Taking the Poetry Out

Taking the Poetry Out

It has occurred
to me
that there are
some people,
perhaps the majority,
for whom poetry
is merely
just so many words
on a page
without much,
or perhaps any,
meaning at all.

Perhaps
poems are so personal
or else too universal
or so specific emotionally
that they
become unreadable
at all
for these folks.

Saying that
one thing
is like another
might seem silly
or totally unnecessary
to people
who use language
to communicate
so straightforwardly,
and so
the actual problem
lies with those,
the poets,
who have little ability
to be so direct.

Perhaps,
then,
poetry is an indulgence
in a particular kind
of mind,

not better or worse
 but merely
constantly attempting
to speak
from such
a subjective point
of view
so far away

that they require
an equally,
impossibly,
burdensomely subjective
guesswork
as to what it is
they are actually
attempting
to say.

In this way,
we might see that
poets have
a certain incapablity
and lack the sense
and awareness enough
to speak
without a flurry
of words
to say
even the simplest
of things.

Poets
and other artists
simply seem incapable
of being plainspoken
and easily understandable,
and,
so often,
that whatever it is
they might have had
to contribute
gets mostly
or even totally lost
along the way.