It's Not Poetry, It's My Life

In honor (or possibly dishonor) of Poetry Month, I'm posting some of my own verse. For most of my growing-up years, I was infatuated with "modern" poetry-- which at the moment seems to be considered the only "real" type-- the kind that doesn't rhyme except by accident, that has no meter, but that looks good flowing down a page. I played around with it for a long time. I even sat at the throne of the great Russian hack Mayakovsky for a while.

Then one day, I looked at it and realized that it didn't take any more talent to throw a bunch of words at a page than it did to splatter paint on a canvas and call it art. So I turned to, yes, regularly metric verse, with the thought that maybe I could learn to create poems that also have form. So far, I'm not good at the poetry part, but I do all right at the rhyme and meter. So here, for my own benefit, if for no other reason, is this episode from my life (and yes, a David Byrne song was a big recent hit on the airwaves):

THE HEALING SEA

"Drive!" she says,
"More speed!" she cries,
And spurs her steed through dark'ning skies.
The wind whips through her auburn hair;
She leaves in her wake only air.
For try as may, she cannot find
A way to leave her tears behind.
And all the demons, large and small,
Still cast o'er her a deadly pall:
Pawing, grasping, clawing, clasping,
Their fingers icy, venom-drenched.
Straining, striving, she keeps driving,
Her hands around the wheel stay clenched.
All is lost to her unless
She can unburden and find rest.

Suddenly she's at land's end,
The wilding sea her only friend.
At the water's edge she leaps
To seek the comfort of the deep.
A dash across the sandy beach—
Can she outpace the demons' reach?
In she plunges, sinking down;
Too attached to life to drown,
She bobs among the rolling waves,
Determined her own life to save.
The sea's voice whispers in her ears
Words which only she can hear,
And slowly understanding dawns...
One by one the demon spawn
All ebb away on flowing tides
That mix with tears of joy she cries.

-copyright S.Cone 1997