Are we meant to dissect
These poems with laboratory
Efficiency and precision?
Are we meant to
Pull them apart and
Split their seams and
Inspect them for flaws?
Or
Are we meant to
Let them spill into us and
Let their loveliness warm our
Souls!
Let them speak and sing and
Sweetly stutter, with a flutter
Let them trace our spirits back
Let them, like a flame, attract
Us until we are, like moths, consumed—
To love a flower, let it bloom.

The poetry
Claws at my rib cage
Like it’s a real cage.
Like it’s minimum wage
Come to pay up, pay a price.
It 𝘣𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘴 like blood
Or bone.
It blooms like a flower
Then crashes like stone.
It flows out of my lips
Like music’s own bile—
Life’s a trial by fire
But this is fire by trial.

Poetry
Is our humble attempt
To describe
The indescribable.

i sit next to you
and we are silent and
i am scared but
you are more scared than
i am and when i
look at your eyes i
see a burning man
being stabbed from the
inside out and
i do not know what to say
because some things are
just not built for poems and
this is one of them.

I'm beginning to wonder
if I lost that magic touch;

These words used to come so easily,
to frame my dreams and nightmares

The paper used to beckon,
gleam like a beacon

While I was lost at sea, the words
would be the rope to pull me free

They gave me just a little bit of clarity,
until they faded away.

I reach and grasp,
maybe catch loose threads,

But it's never strong enough
to pull me to safety.

I miss the magic of words,
of creating invisible images.

It's just starting to feel like
my magic has faded.

Poems have been trying to pour out
of me for years.
But life gets in the way,
time gets in the way,
anything gets in the way.
But life without poetry,
with outlet, without art,
without the outlook
they all bring
is not life.
Life is meant to be
full, colorful, playful and bright,
even when all that flows from the tip of the pen
is dark and gloomy, especially then,
because when the darkness comes to light
and surfaces on the blank page,
lightness, color and love draw nearer,
swaddle, soothe and refuse to ever let go.

Within my mind, these little birds
fly around, nesting and living.
When one of them decides it's their
time to go,
they come up to the window.
They sit upon the sill and
patiently wait to be noticed.
Once our gazes meet, they
begin their final song, asking me
to memorialize them, their lives
into words and lines.
When they've sung their final breath and
all is done, they fly away
for good and float on.

Betwixt words, lines,

Poetry's music fathoms

The depths of our heart,

The heights of our intellect

And imagination,

Breadth of our spirit,

Well of our soul,

Alluding to the unknown,

Saliently.  For, the muse

But whispers, silently,

Moving in mysterious ways.

Painting's music?

Inexpressible and felt,

Unknowable and experienced,

Of echoing images, silences.

Even the shadow

Speaks of the light.

A form of alchemy
By which
Emotional pain
Is transmuted
Into verbal pleasure.

“We make our meek adjustments,
    Contented with such random consolations
    As the wind deposits in slithered and too ample pockets.”

               Hart Crane, “Chaplinesque”

A footstool in the desert.
A napkin in the netherworld.
A coffee stain in the margin.
Perfumed remains.
Systematic garnish.
Dorothy Stratten climbing Mt. Suribachi.
My late father’s toenail clippers.
Pale clouds over Slauson Avenue on the day after the L.A. riots.
A rhetoric of purpose.
A philosophy of decay.
A poem written to an audience of one.

©David Adamson 2015