“What is a poem?”
My English teacher asks,
then barely pauses before answering his own question.
Lists of rules and reasons
spill from his mouth,
so many that he’s cut off by the bell.

I refrain from raising my hand
and telling him that anything can be a poem
if you want it to be.

The painting on the wall,
the fleeting peace that comes
from looking at the moon,
the little boy whose hands are already rough
and calloused with use.

Nothing makes a poem
but our minds and thoughts and wishes
for “poem” is just a word
but what it gives us is ours to decide.

Maybe even this is a poem,
though my English teacher would disagree.

When I: with small words: bent to whisper
Some of her hairs (bronze and electric)
Touched my cheek.
Adrenalin sang: synapses burst into flower
All awareness flared
Just as she turned her eyes to me

Seen from above: they were a deep green well
Where secrets swam,
The green core at the heart of sunset’s backlit breaking wave
Sunlight through summer’s stain glass forest leaves
Greenstone on the beds of mountain streams
Wide pale emeralds set in the strong and lovely bones of face
Whirlpools in which to willingly spin
Mythic green flash of sun drowning in horizon’s sea

Then, leaning,
Still closer to her hair (because I loved the voltage there)
I gave my words
But closeness was a shock that rocked: then paralysed
A near eternal minute: unfolding time was frozen there.
There was a thing like scent: no musks, no florals nor turpines
But it held me tranced
Cocooned by it I swayed upon my feet
Intoxicant beneath the sun
Enveloped in a perfect moment


Then: stunned: I had to walk away
In to the everyday

PaulSN

I have seen her--
a beautiful author of fine
heart-matters..  she catches
words out of thin air--  and
in reaching out her hand;

they,  with great zeal
slow down for her.

When she makes them  
 her own
they gladly  give up
their semantic-like  little
autonomies.

Like me, they
trust her heart with
everything--

  even their own  
 re-naming..

And like me also,
they feel safe
when they are
near her.

All these poems
We write
To save our lives.

To preserve like amber,
Only more futile.

To hope and pray our children
May live on and bless
What’s left of mankind.

May move them with their liveness,
Their boldness, their plain old truth.
Even if all they ever did was express
How they really felt to be alive.

BEST OF BAD

When life throws rocks  at you catch and make sure you hit and Smith the rocks perhaps you could turn it gold.

Make the best of bad circumstances. Only when you give up,
That's when your soul dies, circumstances don't break you,
It only make you, and also can break you if you allowed it to.
And vise versa...
When life give a **** about you, don't, Neva let up,
Don't halt when thou art tired.
Rest when yew  accomplished.

It's only one way up hold your head stand tall in all. Smile at life in time keep moving don't stop!

#C9FM

Creativity cannot be conjured,
Without a little madness.
It is in the crazy that we find,
the beauty beyond us.

Strokes of paint mean nothing,
without a story or emotion.
In our medium we find ourselves,
Creation and Destruction.

The world here calls me a lunatic,
An amateur, a monstrosity.
But today you label me 'crazy',
Tomorrow you label me 'visionary'.

Engineering change through creativity,
Is like giving a fragrance its own flower to go by,
A vessel for the intangible emotion.

Why is it that this ****** up
world labels all the creative people
crazy?
They do it all the time.
John Nash
Vincent Van Gogh
Poe
Sylvia Plath
Michelangelo
Edvard Munch
Fransisco Goya
Hemingway
Kerouac
H.P. Lovecraft
Virginia Woolf
This isn't an exhaustive list.
I think it is complete
*******.
I think Artists see the world
differently, so it's easier
to call them crazy, then to try
and understand why they
see the world differently.
As long as the world keeps
doing this...they can go
**** themselves with a
copy of On the Road,
and a tube of Cerulean blue
paint.