For Poetry’s Sake
The urge to write poetry
Is inborn, like prophecy
Not all poetry wants to
Be storytelling, or rhyme
Or sound like other poets
We might have heard or ignored
Neither does poetry require a topic
Or a message, it can be
Just a matter of lovely language
Just beauty on the stray and loose
It doesn’t need to suffer
For the page or owe the pen anything
Poetry is of so subtle a spirit
We might as well discuss with our soul
What to write next, it’s learned
Through decades of loving
Words and having an itch
To write when nothing else is going on
Speculative metaphysics and art?
Try poetry, and unremember your life
Create layers on top of memory
Write poems, create destiny
Out of the fictions of your mind
It’s like a spell and a sacred hearing
Learning poetry by heart is then
Learning yourself by heart
And there is nothing like
Loving yourself in a poem.