Poem of the Day #4: Also, #5 and #6

A trip away from the pleasant glow of computer screens, accompanied only by an sadly wireless-less iPad and a growing sense of ennui left me unable to update for entirely too many hours.  Fortunately, no one seems to read these poems.  Still, 30 poems were promised, and 30 poems will be delivered.


#4

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies

Exists as a pleasant yet spiteful lie—

A smear on a window—

Fog on the sea—

Unchanged but always changing

Like a lie

Evolves in telling—

Always rearranging—

Until the truth at last resides—

Only in the

Honesty

Of fading, at last, to die.

#5

I take no sordid story with—

No tales of woe shall pass these lips—

When any ask who did I kiss

I shall speak only of fleeting bliss—

And tell them that I did love thee true

For that is all that I could do—

Though thou didst injure me

I would cause thee no injury.

Nor would I slander thy lovely name

Or spill ash over thy lonely grave—

When they ask who, I shall say 

That she is the beautiful Annabel Lee—

So, from now till the last break of day

Men and women whose hearts will fall

Can know the truth: love conquers all.

#6

Into the night we fly

On strong whispering wing

My memory touching yours

But never here—

We are always some other where—

Where they cannot come

We are together, you and I,

In the russet-clad evening sky,

The morning coming but the night young,

Making music with the moment

You grab and hold it

I struggle not to let go

But I cannot hold because though 

We fly so high above everything

We fly with thick, heavy, lead-filled wings

Burdened by the brevity of the past and the longevity of the future—

We cannot be together while we are held apart

By the force of ten thousand parting words

So we fall back down to Earth—

Two soaring, yet Icarian birds.

Poem of the Day #3: "Butterflies"

The heart of poetry is in the universality of its imagery.  We understand, now, that a globalized world means that culture will eventually become homogenized.  (If you don't believe this, get lost in 9GAG or reddit for a few hours)  Because of this, the only truly successful poetry will be written by those who are willing to dig deeper into the core of their conceits.  

A fox ran through a

Meadow—his coat

And face aglow—

Chasing riches I could not see—

Perhaps could never know—

Yet well do I recognize

The joy in his toothy smile—

A feeling like seeing you again

When it has been awhile—

Poem of the Day #2: "Endlessly Rocking"

Poetry is powerful emotion recollected in tranquility, certainly.  As the world continues its inexorable evolution, and poetry dies for the millionth time since humanity first scribbled words on clay, the shifting definitions must allow that Wordsworth's is entirely true.  The all-inclusive descriptions of "what makes a poem" are fantastic for their democratic nature, but useless in defining an art form.  I recognize the authenticity of the attempt, but I reject the utility of it.  For me, poetry is like pornography, you know it when you see it, and the vast majority of what we now see would have been better left rotting in the corner of its author's mind.

I saw a face deep in the crowd—

A face without a name

A face that—time ignoring—

Might—in my mind—not change—

And though oft I swear I can forget

It is true I never do—

Though that moment has long since passed—

I swear that face was you.