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 3d Man
badwords
They will tell you there is a right way.
They will hand you a torch and call it the sun.
They will roll their words in raw linen and whisper:
"This is what poetry is meant to be."

And you will nod.
Because they have made it so that not nodding feels like blasphemy.

But listen—
the ink does not check your credentials.
The meter does not ask if your suffering is organic.
A line does not collapse because it was crafted instead of bled.

They will tell you a poem must be naked, barefoot, aching—
as if there is no beauty in a well-cut suit.
They will decry the temple and build a pulpit in its ruins,
preaching freedom in a voice that allows no dissent.

Good poets are cult leaders,
and the first rule of the cult
is that they are not one.

So write the sonnet, carve the sestina,
sculpt the page in iambic steel.
Or break it, shatter it, scatter its bones—
but let no one call your wreckage untrue.

And if they do,
smile.
Because poetry does not kneel to priests.
A counter-point mirrored in style to:

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4983752/good-words-are-clickbait/

The morale of the story is:

try not to dictate creation and by extension freedoms.
~my poet friends and friendly poets~

(written in anger, then sorrow,
tinged with regret, but in the end one
has no choice but to forgive and forget)

<•>

the ghood poet knows no boundaries,
lays down tracks of a New England
pond of nirvana,
or across Siberian froze wastelands,
another
salves the wounds of dying soldiers,
and gives away comfort to the dying
with the freeing oxygen of
comforting words

the world of self,
that thing we know best,
thus encouraged by the textbooks,
well,
to have at it, plays whacamole
with your  owned flirtatious emotions,
none too imperious or low down or
garbage dump *****, that yet
cannot be validated by exploratory
over-the-line words pithy

even the florid, tiresome nickel & dime ing
rhyming scheming crutches,
we so oft employ,
yields up stuff that ain’t half bad,
periodically,
though, the blunt of words well crafted
needs
no such delimiting amusing playthings
or imprisoning
I-am-amoebic-pen-tata-meter

take you inspiration from here and there,
the proverbial deep dark of the mind’s recessed corridors of
corrupted consciousness,
or, the
contrail whiffs of the steaming steaming of the contradictions of a
newborn first day’s contrast of-
the wet dew on toes cooling,
while the simultaneous sun warms all
the cheeks,
heats the blood with
a thanks-god-I’m-alive
overwhelmingly overall tickling,

or
not.

write with the tools you have, but keep
them well sharpened, with
insight and revelation,
exploring the rain’s windowed
navigable rivulets,
the musical tempos
of waves and their multi-mystical variations,
and the readers will come like
pilgrims to your  holy land,
wearied and yet so delightedly hopeful,
with tingling contrasting dictions,
to capture and release,
by shattering any
stale notions of adulation
will bring your
audience of holy voyagers and voyeurs
to imbibe so deeply your creativity for the quenching, and the
amen gasp escaping tween
their lips is just a simple holy,
gentling thank you

discard the bad words as ornery and
distracting, veiled in pomposity and
highfaluting, self-saluting, arrogance of
those deeming themselves critical thinkers,
who thrive in the low mud flats of
self-pretension and the reassurance
of a mirror’s reassurance

write straight from the heart,
fill our eyes with the
complexity of the simple
and
grant us the write to share,
in your humanity

craft the work
and
the work
will repay
so stealthily
by secretly
crafting you





                                   nml
3:43 am 2/16/25

p.s,always fixyour typos
Glass-winged moths hover,
opal figs drip milky dusk,
stars hum, ripe with light.

Her
She sits by the light
half-awake, half-dreaming
the kind of morning where silence
feels like a conversation

Her hair, undone by the wind
and her eyes
they hold a language deeper than words
a pause between thoughts
a moment before the rain

There’s something in her gaze
not just beauty, but a knowing,
like she’s seen the sun rise a thousand times
and still finds it worth watching

She wears the weight of the world
like an old sweatshirt
loose, familiar,
but never quite forgotten

And I wonder, does she know?
That the way she exists
unfiltered, unbroken
is a kind of poetry
no one can write down
50 years


ago, full of the
Righteousness of God.

He

?
who held my place
while insanity

With torn dreams, the
miasmas of lost love.

Bless me Father
you who showed
the ways to Hell

Baptizet me
Again.

The midnight (sirens
are lapping.
I stumble from
the drink of happiness

spilled on the sands.

You whose conscious is
trifled with like the fish
on the line

I eat
my disappointment

cold


Caroline Shank
Valentine's Day
   2025



Caroline Shank
2.14..2025
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