The Poet

"A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness." -- Robert Frost

I realize that poets write poetry for other poets. Those readers of poems may not know that they are poets. They know they like the verse, the play of words, the startles of the wordplay. I have written poems and shared them with my wife. mostly poems of love. I think she likes them. I wonder how good they really are. I think that she is a poet at heart as well, so she has an understanding of the emotional passage that is the poem. I believe people with the heart of a poet can see past bad verse, much the way I admire Bob Dylan's singing even though he often doesn't carry a very good tune. The lyrics, or musical poems, are terrific.

Poetry--written, read or listened to--is a sensory experience. People look for sensory experience to enhance their lives, whether we watch movies, bungee jump or set on a rock and watch the waves come into the shore on a beach. I like the freedom that it gives me to just try to paint emotions with a brush where the paint is words. Splashing them around in non-traditional ways. Ways that can make the leap from the reality that we live in to the eternal questions that we ask ourselves.

Sometimes my poems are a question that I have answered and I write it down just to remember that point of my life. Other times I don't know the answer and the poem is a therapeutic effort to figure out what I seek.

I have a book where I have written a bunch of poems from different times in my life. It is a mad scrambled up mess that sort of represents the conflicts and challenges that I have encountered along the way in this life. I have not shared the words with anyone. I often wonder if I should destroy it like I have heard some people do to their journals. Maybe a note to burn it when I die, send the words up in smoke chasing my spirit through the stars.

After all is said and done, I would rather be known as a poet of living life than a bad poet of words.