This is a poem about poetry–A metapoem, if you will.
Since it’s something about its own genre, it seems to fit the bill.
I’m not the best thing since sliced bread but I know a thing or two.
When poetry fills your lungs like air,
It’s something you cannot help but do.
So I write and I write and in my head I’m always rhyming
And I say, “Okay that’s enough,” but I can’t not feel the timing.
Like Tracy Turnblad in Hairspray, you can’t stop the beat
Once I start beating the drum in my head
Because the girl with dancing feet
Has feet on her fingers, writing instead.
So my fingers dance on the pages until they are satisfied
And they resurrect me on days when I thought parts of me died.
There are some things I can say in poetry that I just can’t say in words.
Especially when I’m in pain because poetic rhetoric embraces my hurt.
There are some things I can do in poetry that I just can’t do in real life.
I can cut deep into the soul with language without bludgeoning you with my knife.
In poetry I just go–even if I wanted to stop it, I couldn’t.
In the rest of life I wait, deciding in everything if I should or shouldn’t.
In poetry I don’t have to be right.
I don’t have to be wrong.
I don’t have to be anything.
In poetry I can just be–
Everything and nothing at all.
Sometimes the poems are about myself,
Sometimes they are a story,
Sometimes imaginations of wealth
Or manifestations of glory
Often times, however, poetry embraces my broken.
It shines a light on the dark places that many leave unspoken.
Poetry is strange haven for me, yet a safe one, indeed.
It has always existed when I was most in need.
Unlike the people who seem to come and go [and commit, but then leave again.]
Poetry is here, no matter how I feel about it, not like a season’s fashion trend.
Even when I do not try,
Rhyming words drool out of my mouth.
They flow through my fingers, race through my mind,
and they have to croak out.
Poetry is inside of me, and it shows through the way I live.
This life is a piece of poetry, asking us all what we’re willing to give.
I’m not all that and a bag of chips, or even remotely “all that”
But no matter what, I’ll keep writing poetry because it’s much like swinging a bat.
It’s swinging at life’s baseball– the fastball that breaks 90 miles per hour.
And deciding that you’ll fight to stay in the game, even if you’re on the field in April’s showers.
This fight includes hitting tons of foul balls and sometimes striking out.
In tandem with the line-drives and home runs, which remind you what life is about.
In poetry I experience the ups and the downs
As I ride the rollercoaster of my soul.
In poetry I embrace each tear and frown,
To remember that every smile represents something bold.
This poem is a poem about poetry, something near and dear to my heart.
I hope this metapoem helped you better appreciate poems, as an important form of art.
lovinglifeasemma.com 