more constant
than science
more precise
than algebra
more valuable
than cash . . .
why can’t our lives be guided by poetry?

POETRY
a more consistent thought lately.
I’m reading more, I’m writing more,
I’m believing more. Lately.
It is poetry month.
April.

Why now, I don’t know, and why just one month?
Why not every month?
It matters not; but it does.
Here, as well, people are sharing their work, their words,
and people are talking about their favorite
poetry.

I am not sure if most people talk
poetry
enough.

Doesn’t it have to rhyme?
Not all of the time . . .
 not for everyone.

If not a poem, then
a poet
is mainly misunderstood.
But how? The language is so direct,
it cuts out the crap, rarely are there ums and awes,
and
any hesitation is purposeful.
Poets do not stumble on words. Poets respect words, poets
breathe words.
Words are currency, for a poet. Why not for everybody?

POETRY
celebrates language, any language . . .
I must admit envy as, recently,
very recently,
two people, here on this screen, shared a poem
(in fact, a poem about poetry) across the ocean,
in the language in which it was intended.
la poesía
Okay, it wasn’t envy. It was jealousy: pure and simple.
For I have always enjoyed Neruda,
(I keep a small volume on my office desk to remind myself, in the middle of
the day, when I’m infected by the banal corporate culture [an oxymoron?]
I open the pages to remind myself how words are to be used, correctly).
I enjoy Neruda, in the only language I know.
I read translations.
I wonder,
what is lost in translation?

How much more wonderful are his words
in his native tongue?
Perhaps I should learn Español?
Or maybe I can be satisfied in knowing
two people
I don’t really know,
(and they really know not each other)
took a few sentences,
to share, both a language
and a poem.

LA POESÍA
Separated by an ocean, and time zones,
and communicating not with lips, but through a screen,
two people shared something in common.
A poem.
That is how powerful poetry
is
can be
and should be.
It should bring people together.
Lovers, warriors, politicians and their prey
might better understand themselves and each other
if they thought more in poetry, than in whatever else
they might be thinking.

This is not a poem.
This is simply
random scrabble,
disjointed musings,
caffeine-free morning thoughts,
nothing more really,
than a long-winded statement
of why
I like poetry
(in April, or any month)
and maybe why
you do 
too.

@2014 j.g. lewis

Originally published on Rebelle Society, September 2014    www.rebellesociety.com
Above photograph features EPITHALAMIUM by Pablo Neruda