The Madness of Poetry

There is a reason why very few people read poetry.  There is a reason why many people who do read poetry complain that they cannot understand it. And yet, there is a reason why poets write poetry; they are a bit mad.  They suffer from a kind of lunacy that demands they open healed wounds until they bleed again.  It instructs them to confront their truths, their own truths and, however painful, share them with others through the currency of the poem.   Poets not only suffer for themselves but open themselves to the suffering of others – to the tragedies of living and the reality of dying.

As I sat, this morning, sipping my coffee a poem, or at least the lines for a poem, intruded into the serenity of the moment.  When I conceive poetry it comes to me in the form of words, lines, and visuals.  I had read the day before about the inconceivable suffering, for over sixty-four percent of the population, in Sudan.  The image of starving, sick, orphaned children appeared in my mind.  I didn’t want to go there.  I didn’t want to see the horror my imagination conjured.  I just wanted to sip my coffee, look out at my gardens bathed in soft sunlight and enjoy a moment of peace and tranquility.  But the poet in me had other ideas…

And that’s precisely why very few people read poetry.  Poetry is an open wound.  Poetry is brutal.  Poetry is naked, needy, and unforgiving, and if I weren’t a poet perhaps, I would have a hard time reading poetry, as well.

The Madness of Poetry…

…behold the poem
unbidden     I
perfectly content
that it stay hidden
behind walls I thought
I had constructed in my mind
altering the moment  till
it crushes me beneath
a truth      a lie
ineviitably taking me
to places that I do not want
to go
alerting me to things
I do not want to know
demanding in the glare of light
that never dims
that darkness may not only
live within the womb
of night     the poem
has teeth      has claws
has blades that slice away
at my resistance
demolishing the distance
between where I am
and the inevitable edge
the ledge of rock and grime
that cracks then
crumbles beneath the weight
of words I carry
like a backpack filled with stones
the atrocity of bones
of every child that’s dying
every sociapath that’s lying
taking me
( I name it inspiration)
to the poem
perhaps 
the only place I know
as home…