Punk poetry

Let me tell you a story.

My history of writing poetry is two decades of the exact same process. Going back to high school, people read what I produce and proclaim what I write to be "good." This (I believe) means that I seem to know what I'm doing, and have experimented with form. I don't write poetry like people who very rarely do. That's nice, but also has no larger meaning- people write very conventional poetry that's amazing. Some people write avant garde stuff that's total trash.

Being told what you write is "good" is not at all what I want to achieve. I want people to feel something, not just get a sense that the lines and stanzas are competently written. My usual defensive posture appears here, where I do not showcase emotions and am confused how what I feel will translate. And yet.

I have just finished the first in a three-class series on poetry at community college. When we were sharing poems in a loose format for the last week of class, someone said of mine that they "read like punk songs." I have been writing very short poetry: there are very few lines, and the lines have very few words. The feedback was they were short, but they had punch. Double entendres, unusual metaphors, brief vulgarity, and a lot of word combinations that create a bouncy, sing-song quality.

I dump my heart into Scrivener every morning. Poetry, short stories, thoughts of romance. This blog that gets a new essay every day. Perhaps my bleeding will mean something greater one day. But I would let it weep all the same.

If I cannot find myself on the page, then I am lost and no expedition will find me.

Artemis