Everybody’s got something to say about poetry
because rhymes peak in meaning shedding light on our unspeakables.
For an ample example,
take the other day when I sat not knowing how to write a poem
and assuming I was fruitlessly booming the thin air,
I yelled and spat my frustration:
“How do I start?”
And my dog looks up from her water dish and says,
“I hate to encroach on your ‘artistic space’
‘cuz I know you're like ‘in-the-zone’ or whatever,
but if you really want my advice, here it is,”
and then my dog says,
“Poet, breathe now –
because it’s the last thing you’ll ever do for yourself.
Poet, breathe now because there’s a fire inside you that needs oxygen to burn,
and if you don’t run out of breath, you’re gonna run out of time.
Poet, breathe now because once the spot gets packed
you gotta save that air for screamin, your --
inhalation takes saviorisms to sky-highs
you gotta go with the flowin’ of your own voice.
Poet, breathe now because once you spit, you won’t even need air,
you'll be rockin’ rhymes respiratory,
you’ll breathe poetry, baby.
You breathe now, and you’ll never forget that breath.
You got --
pulsasive passages passing the mic
and hot hallelujahs when verses you write
and your sin is your savior your song is your life
and your words are like wonders to wandering fifes pipin’ ceremony:
poets, you’re man, words your wife
and your honeymoon orbits around your love like metronomic metros
keepin’ time to the heartbeat of your heavenly drums –
Poet, breathe now because you might have something to say
because peace might depend on your piece
because you breathe
and that air might help your brain tell your heart to keep pumping
one more cycle and that blood might help your lips form one last word
that hits the audience hard –
because we are all made from the same elements
and we all breathe the same air
so celebrate our mutual recipes of existence
by persisting to stay alive
ducking sageless luckless ages
like intellectual hippies!
When you take a breath
the universe rings out like circular beats –
landing planets are seraphim
storms are spit –
stars are soulcandles!
and you breathe like chest rebounds
even when all hope seems lost
our sounds pound mics
like hope-stars
like “we’re still here” hollas!
we make angels of our nightclubs,
bards of our bums,
outlooks of our outcasts
and infinity of our sums,
we are the children of empathy,
the pathos of slums,
we heal like helios
like cyclical drums
we enlist life from listless
and sometimes
even get things done
Poet, breathe now
because once you start your piece
you can die behind that microphone
and
death may be breathless
but poetry’s deathless
so breath be
our savior
eternal.
Poets, breathe once with me now.
That’s one poem we all wrote.