This is how Joseph Fasano, poet who wrote the poem below, describes poetry:
Joseph Fasano gets to the heart of it here. The reason why so many of us avoid reading or writing poetry is because it is vulnerable. It is emotional. It is truthful. It lays things bare. When I come to the blog on Sundays (a day that I have devoted to poetry), I often think to myself, do I have it in me to write about what I am really feeling? Can my mind translate my heart today? Many times I just don’t want to “go there.” So I put an oven mitt over my heart, and I look for someone else’s poem to publish.
“Why speak of the use
of poetry? Poetry
is what uses us.” – Hayden Carruth
Is it possible that poetry is just the soul translated? Poetry is the noble attempt to put into words that which can never fully be explained. Poetry is our soul trying to speak to us about what really “speaks to us.” Write a poem today, using this prompt: “I am the translator. Soul, what are you trying to tell me?” Perhaps use your non-dominant hand to write your poem. I imagine that your inner poet has more to say to you, than you think.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I love that poem “Materialism” from Joseph Fasano. Poetry is in everything and it is for everyone…
Thank you Kelly for sharing the poem and your thoughts.
Here I share one of my poems:
TOUCH WITHOUT A MEMORY
Through those smoke-clad towns
the children and the hungry dogs ran,
and you ran, girl; without imagining
that years later you would hug snow moons, you would put phrases in your mouth
that we never dared to say during that time and you would get used to other arms without forgetting me;
without forgetting that we ran together,
with our bare minds when the volcano illuminated us so that our feet would not trip over bodies drunk with gunpowder.
Through those streets
love played hide and seek with a war.
The green and blue men wiped the sweat
that burned their eyes after days and nights of spitting hatred through their veins.
If our lives did not end in those years
when autumn bloomed bombs and bullets,
it was because our love,
which was forged before the gaze of death, had a future,
even far away from the burnt fields,
but it had a future,
even if it was on the strange snow
that rejects us today…
Walberto Campos
Oh Walberto! I am so happy to hear from you. Your poem is amazing. Thank you for sharing it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.