Featured Poem:
Neon Poem
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Featured Poem:
Neon Poem
after Amiri Baraka’s Black Art
Poems are bullshit
unless they teach.
Poems serve no purpose
unless they reach
the audience they are written for,
the ears they are meant for.
You could write the perfect love poem,
tell us how you teased her
till she let you touch her,
but if she cannot remember you,
then, sir, your poetry didn’t do what it was supposed
to.
I’ve heard war poems
that hid behind fancy syllables and metaphors,
quietly comfortable with the thought of coming to blows
over why they should fight for anything at all.
Once, I wrote a hope poem,
one of those there is a future–type poems,
but it never spoke
till what few wishes we had left broke.
I’ve even seen live poems
that wait till the audience is gone
then begin humming softly as a song,
murdering any sense of rhythm they might have had at all.
I’m thinking of an it’s too late poem.
I’ll build it up till it sounds like metal bats against tin cans,
Loud and outrageous, still too little too late.
We want fast poems
that can outrace us, outface us,
maybe even take us to where we’ve never been,
quick as sin.
A look at me poem
that screams out to the world,
“Open up your eyes and see,
you can’t even speak your mind,
yet you still believe that you and you
and we are free
from something or someone.”
Anyone, give me a neon poem:
a black, red, white, yellow, purple, pink, even lime poem
that will teach all other wannabe poems
how to grow up and become real type poems,
because poems are bullshit
unless they teach;
they serve absolutely no purpose
unless they reach
someone.
after Amiri Baraka’s Black Art
Poems are bullshit
unless they teach.
Poems serve no purpose
unless they reach
the audience they are written for,
the ears they are meant for.
You could write the perfect love poem,
tell us how you teased her
till she let you touch her,
but if she cannot remember you,
then, sir, your poetry didn’t do what it was supposed
to.
I’ve heard war poems
that hid behind fancy syllables and metaphors,
quietly comfortable with the thought of coming to blows
over why they should fight for anything at all.
Once, I wrote a hope poem,
one of those there is a future–type poems,
but it never spoke
till what few wishes we had left broke.
I’ve even seen live poems
that wait till the audience is gone
then begin humming softly as a song,
murdering any sense of rhythm they might have had at all.
I’m thinking of an it’s too late poem.
I’ll build it up till it sounds like metal bats against tin cans,
Loud and outrageous, still too little too late.
We want fast poems
that can outrace us, outface us,
maybe even take us to where we’ve never been,
quick as sin.
A look at me poem
that screams out to the world,
“Open up your eyes and see,
you can’t even speak your mind,
yet you still believe that you and you
and we are free
from something or someone.”
Anyone, give me a neon poem:
a black, red, white, yellow, purple, pink, even lime poem
that will teach all other wannabe poems
how to grow up and become real type poems,
because poems are bullshit
unless they teach;
they serve absolutely no purpose
unless they reach
someone.
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Inspiring
I am so thrilled to find this archive and this is the first poet I’ve looked at and the first poem I read, ‘Dreams’, is absolutely marvelous. Thank you TJ Dema – and thank you Badilisha
Thank you TJ Dema amazing & exciting work