On the Ridiculousness of Being a Poet

Poem by: KEJones

Reads: 392 | Likes: 0 | Shelves: 0 | Comments: 3

Sometimes, as a poet, you think, what the heck am I saying? Won first place in a literary magazine contest.

On the Ridiculousness of Being a Poet:

How seldom thoughts can center senseless things:

Make sense of feelings, severed child-like wings

Which dare to show our earnest loving hearts

Those hidden shadows dark with secret arts.

Why trouble seeing, being selfish, find

It so much better being simply blind?

No thoughts nor words, no simple image makes

That we, ourselves, cannot but choose to fake.

What true emotion do we not defend

Can just be seen by efforts at pretend?

Why try to reason feelings from inside?

Let’s pick and pry with words that can decide.

Each concept, action, movement, heartbeat, more

Those deep, well-worked and fickle words explore

Should make you listen, laugh at each attempt

And maybe see you treat with more contempt.

For what are poets for, but silly things

Who try to capture feelings, thoughts, and dreams?

Submitted: June 30, 2011

Poetry poetry poets silly deep thought-provoking

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Comments

Frank Ramtahal

A very interesting poem with great flow and good rhyming. I think you should delete the "For" at the beginning of the penultimate line.

Fri, July 1st, 2011 2:22pm

Author
Reply

Thanks. I know what you mean about deleting the "for". I agree it is not necessary. However, I wanted to keep the iambic pentameter precise. I'd almost want to use the word 'but' instead of 'for' but it flows even worse that way...

Fri, July 1st, 2011 1:13pm

GuruGuy

Excellent work! I feel the same way so I can relate. Wow! You won a literary contest? Nice! To be honest I only write short stories and possibly novels, never poems. In fact, I was neither good at poetry nor interested. But one day, sitting doing nothing, I decided to write a poem and publish it here on Booksie. Guess what? Readers loved it!! I was astounded and felt more like doing more of it. That first poem is called "Dungeon with Dragoons" and hopefully you'll check it out when you can.

Overall great job at expressing the ridiculous feeling we have every time we think about writing a poem, like, "What the hell am I saying?!" hahaha. Cheers!!

Sat, July 2nd, 2011 4:19am

Author
Reply

HA! Agreed. I did read Dungeon with Dragons yesterday. I think it is a good experimental poem. I thought you could really expand upon it and take it to the next level. I also thought I might not fully understand it if it had anything to do with the game. I'm not really a gamer. My thoughts are to not be afraid to sound ridiculous when writing poetry. I think when we feel most foolish, we are really getting to something meaningful.

Sat, July 2nd, 2011 8:47am