Poetry is what I write when I’ve got nothing more to say. I'm done with all my scientific high-handedness, political self-importance, and spiritual exceptionalism. Doe, a deer. I came for the leaves and stayed because the river.
I've been writing poetry since the 2nd grade and still haven't said what I wanted to say. I remember loving Jesus but avoiding Sunday School with all my Heart. Winter was a lonely frozen playground. Summer was diving in the lake.
From a certain mountain point of view, poetry isn't even in the world. In my sophomore year at Central Catholic High School, I attended Mass on Nine First Fridays, and in so doing am assured of the Roman Catholic version of Enlightenment. Bless you Sister Margaret Mary.
I swear I saw the Loch Ness Monster in Lake Winnipesaukee. It offered me a dime bag for my first three Led Zeppelin albums. I took it. Poetry trivia! Who wrote The Drunken Boat? I took a class at Boston College on the Art of Sacred Architecture, Henry Adams, and the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres. You cannot forget such weird beauty.
Thought is the alien. Belief is the monster. Love is the mother. Poetry is the paradox behind every paradox. Judge not, love locally. And now my last poetics are the words, love, I don't know. At the sign of bhakti, stop your deconstruction. Being is the sign of self-awareness. What else, maybe a flower. A dream is a dream is a dream.
“Then she opened up a book of poems / And handed it to me / Written by an Italian poet / From the thirteenth century / And everyone of them words rang true / And glowed like burnin' coal / Pourin' off of every page / Like it was written in my soul / From me to you / Tangled up in blue”
by the time I finished writing my masters thesis in american history only to discover that the single lonely protest made against the boston associates' megamills of lawrence and lowell was the one by one who only wanted more to sell the water rights, i knew right then and there, i was a poet
