Poetry saves the planet. In history, the only true gauge that reveals itself in measured clock time is static pulses. Forming language. A goulash of words and phrases that hold various meanings. Electric fields of impulses and energy. Clouds of emotional show and tell. A poetic stew or thin soup. A hearty library of texts and phrases, stanzas, and paragraphs for that reader, writer, author, heir apparent. No slave to the spirit of life. Since clay tablets, hieroglyphs, cuneiform, illuminated manuscripts, haiku, limericks, sonnets, sestinas, palindromes, odes, and other modes of communication. Mixed-up elements that hold words at bay. Infiltrates conscious minds. The unconscious, subconscious suckers.
Can poetry save the world? Anything is possible. I know it can save a soul. Maybe pierce your heart. I can’t address the question of what poetry can do for you, but it can’t hurt your chances for redemption, joy, and happiness, pain, pleasure and suffering. Poetry, like basic truth, is the only thing that can make you feel good in a bad situation. There are kernels of wisdom in every book. A book of poems can transform worlds. A poem that makes you smile, laugh, or cry.
There’s no better medicine than inspiration, or the ability to create your own imaginings. It reshapes reality, creating a new sense of verse and being. A new improved understanding of the world. Like the faithful with their prayers to a tone-deaf deity. Takes their money for a sermon and a prayer. A revelation of what can be. The words mutate on every page, in every voice. Pass the offering basket.
Read a poem. Let it hold you in fresh new projections of yourself. Use words you see, and hear. Now express yourself. Take a poet to lunch or out for cocktails. The people you meet and places you go. It’s not like some precious, pithy poet who writes about the sun, the dawn, the moon, sunset, or stars and such. The readers exclaim how special and exquisite it is. How brilliant you are. Sacred and holy. And it may be true.
Beauty’s like a poke in the peeper from your own finger. Or a kick in the groin from some angry hooker. Forgive my sins. A thousand poets swimming like sharks in a sea of feeding frenzied drivel. Poets are people that don’t want to be. Pretenders to the throne. Kings of nothing, yet they can change like a striptease chameleon creeper, a pencil-neck geek and sideshow freaks. In the land of plenty, words are cheap. Spoken in earnest, said in jest. It's not going to be easy.
Life reduced to burning embers. The flames of ancient voices' fury. Rising from their ashes. Dead Poets Antisocial Club. Some are angry; others aren’t so nice. Even though many aren’t so sure. They say it manifests from thin air. An ethereal cloud of words and dust. We need a better translation. A bigger vocabulary. A dictionary. A thesaurus. An AI assistant. No mere bard of chance could do a puppet dance in a chorus line of old-fashioned wordsmiths. The academy of academic economics. Money makes them dance. The money walks away. Cheers to academic success. They do the dance of death.
We require raw power to feel the beat of life. A poem to save us from ourselves. How could they know, and what would they do if they did? These are rare flowers of evil. Holy smokes, the drama queen’s hen party at the sacred heart of the bleeding virgin poetry open mic. The fickle naysayers of spontaneous verse are rare. Don’t even mention poetry. An unlimited supply of books that no one wants. But some brave souls who cracked the spines and broke the code. Poetry saves the world. Part two. A power struggle that leaves a mark forever. Let it be known, your insatiable lust for gusto.