Everyday appears a mystery, and the mystery more wonderful.
‘Light at dawn, shone
through clouds, thick with weather.
Even in the gray a beauty of quiet, potent perplexity
Awaiting this day.A most-astonishing sight.’
Poetry has always explained a lot of shit we just don’t understand, a state in which reality can’t seem to interpret, can’t conjure up actual words to define the meaning.
Hence the popular, though, nonsensical phrase, ‘poetic license,’ in which apparently one can indulge without guilt the stretching of truth — from the online freedictionary: n. The liberty taken by an artist or a writer in deviating from conventional form or fact to achieve a desired effect.
However, in the real world, one doesn’t have to be any kind of artistic type — politicians, for instance, use poetic license much-abundantly to whitewash something or decipher harmful bullshit, form or fact.
I’ve been writing poetry for decades, since my early teens — I was ‘class poet‘ for my high school graduating class in 1967.
After all this time, I can’t recall the whole title of that particular poem written for the occasion, just ‘Something and Green Lemonade,’ which doesn’t make a shitload of sense.
I do remember the senior breakfast, though, where the poem was read aloud.
A girl from the Drama Club performed the piece — and she indeed had utterly performed — and the effect had been devastating, and not to use poetic license, the dramatic reading brought down the house.
After she’d spoken the last word, I remember a bit of deep silence (and thinking at the time — oh, no), then a momentous outburst of applause — and a lot of crying.
Cheerleaders — cheerleaders! — came up to me with tears in their eyes and gave me kisses.
An unreal dream since I was an original member of the ‘geeks and nerds’ crowd.
A while after that I though my shit didn’t stink, but that sweet euphoria didn’t last long as life carries no poetic license, and here we be in the nowadays.
Seemingly in time, a simple snap of the fingers.
