Poetry: A Poem

Hello. I have written a thing which I'd like to share with you. It's quite possibly an exercise in self-indulgent, navel-gazing, masturbatory nonsense because it is a poem about poetry. It's called, fittingly enough, "Poetry: A Poem" and it goes thusly:

Poetry: A Poem

A poem,

Said the dead and ancient Greek

Whom I'd read into life once more,

Is a made thing.

An act of creation.

Life with ink in its veins.

I do not wish to bleed,

But if life and my all too human brain

Do conspire against me

With sharpened, moonlit knives

I will let it scab upon the page.

I will trap it where it can be safely observed.

I will steal laughter and tears from my audience,

And into the silence that's left behind

I will shout my thoughts.

I will scream into this world the maelstrom

Whose nocturnal rages trap me in unwilling consciousness.

I will pray

With every part of my grubby, battered soul

That this time -

Please, O spiteful, capricious deities -

That this one time

Something will echo back at me which I understand.

And then I will have a pint,

Calm myself down, y'know.

Take the edge off, sort of thing.

It's bad enough that I make myself memorise this shit,

And need to recite it to anyone who'll listen,

But it really wouldn't do to pretend that poetry is magic.

And a double gin as well, I think,

With bitter lemon if you have it,

Or lime and soda if not.

I do genuinely love those moments

When two people, separated by time, or distance,

Or the breadth of the darkness behind two sets of eyes,

Meet across a crowded line of verse.

I know, then, that I am not alone,

And nor are you.

Oh, and a bag of pork scratchings, please,

It does you good to treat yourself.

It makes you feel alive.

One hopes you're well,
Yrs,
ADWoodward