Poetry: A Conversation

-         Poetry is anarchy,

Writing without rules.

-         Which of us thinks this may be?

None but bloody fools.

-         Is it not perverse (or worse?)

To throttle free expression?

-         Admonish not in terms so terse,

We jostle with shadows, illusions.

-         A poet’s mind, none may bind

With scansion, rhyme and metre.

Such are but tools, as you may find

In any craftsman’s atelier.

-         The words do dance as, in a trance,

Inspiration wells like happy tears.

-         Press not intellect into abeyance;

Calm thought suspended kindles fears.

-         You mock me here, so austere,

Oh flinty Wordsworth to my wan Keats.

-         You appear to be, apprentice seer,

Consummate acrobat of linguistic feats.

-         Poetry is incendiary;

To inflame the heart of man.

-         Liturgy, synergy, pathways to infinity,

Are the poet’s true domain.

-         Poetry is propinquity:

The queasy thrill of vaulting desire.

-         Kinder still is obliquity;

Truth in experience is ever mired.

-         Poetry is threnody;

Empathy, entropy: a cry wrung out of darkness.

-         Life is as the hand-wove Kashmiri;

God-wrought, flawed: extraordinariness.

-         Poetry is feeling, emotions reeling,

A divine charter warranting the senses.

-         Contemplation rather, inward-seeing;

The rendered world in contorting lenses.

-         Then how are we to ‘wrap’ this ‘rap’,

For conflict makes me weary?

-         We are the infant in Nature’s lap,

 The innocent dream of the Apothecary.