Canonization

It's dangerous to love you like I do;
There's such a risk we'll break our hearts together.
It's not that I expect such stormy weather,
But rather that it's possible we two
With such convulsions, loving as we woo,
Will snap the tie that serves us as our tether,
And like two birds of close but different feather,
Part from a shock and later live to rue.
I say this only as an advocate
Placed on the devil's party to assist
In arguing the counter to a saint;
I feel the claims against us are but faint,
So faint they might as well just not exist,
For we two are a lovely perfect fit.

Manipulation

I can't believe I'm here at all, but since
I am, I might as well do all I can
To flatter and cajole, sweet-talk, convince,
And otherwise press weaknesses in man
To do my bidding. I've no reason to
Be less than fully sly and subtle here
Because they do not share my point of view,
And if I don't win out, then I must fear
That I will be rammed under and subsumed
By their desires, intentions, meanings, words.
I do not wish to be so clearly doomed
And so I'll break their thoughts into potsherds
By close manipulation. Since I find
Me somehow here, I will impose my mind.

Effortlessly

I feel I'm doing far too little work
To reap the gains that fall into my lap;
I fear that I will wake up with a jerk
To find this all was just a pleasant nap,
And none of what I dreamt has come to pass.
Each seed I sow grows fertilely despite
The lack of water that I feed my grass;
The clothes I wear perpetually stay white
No matter what muck I may roll into;
The hopes and dreams I had, wild and strange,
Have all found an occasion to come true,
Across the depth and breadth of their great range.
So pinch me, but I hope to not wake up,
Lest waking should make empty my full cup.

Inactive

The day that I am not a lazy ass
Will be a banner day. I don't expect
That it will be too soon; I recollect
Some others who, like me, chewed up the grass
And did not choose to move their bulky mass
While everyone about them was direct
And active: such, as I do, would infect
Their fellows, 'til all were in such a pass.
So I may cause infirmity in others
And make all men sleep lazily all day;
Those who already do so are my brothers,
And our great mother's in a family way,
For this attractive ease completely smothers
The industry of virtue. Let us play.

Edenic

Life is made up of several boundaries
And by the violation of the same.
The project of all living is to squeeze
The maximum enjoyment from this game.
Will doing as I ought this time present
A later opportunity for joy?
Or will blind following of rules prevent
A future pleasure, and only annoy?
Should I eat all I please, and touch the fruit
That was forbidden me, or only taste
The other trees, from which pleasant pursuit
I was not barred - which one would be the waste?
Each day is made of choices just like these:
Are you sure you should just do what you please?

Dystopic

The broken silence of an undead radio
Screams out across the barren wastes unbearably
While bathed within a sickly iridescent glow
Those who should listen seem to only ever see.
The senses go unutilized by anyone
That could repudiate or change the desperate place;
Even the sorrows that were once so well-begun
Are hopeless now. There is no end to this stopped race.
Nothing continues; nothing finishes, or fades
It simply is, but is not known to be itself.
Life's lemons are still rinded for no lemonades
Can be made here: they rot untouched up on the shelf.
All is made bleak, yet not completely made to scale
Even the failures sit unfinished in their fail.

Rich and Strange

I used to be a calm and quiet man
For whom no trouble could be justified,
Before whose eyes precise objections ran
To every project, who was mollified
By nothing but assurances that pain
Would be completely absent from his life,
Who did not even like to risk the rain,
Much less a greater danger or more strife,
A man whose very confidence in God
Relied on sunny weather and flat seas,
Who thought of inconveniences as odd
Detritus wafted toward him by the breeze.
But now because of you I find in me
An appetite for more uncertainty.

On Verisimilitude in Poetry

A derivative consideration of several points I have made before is the question of how representative or true to life an art poetry should be. I consider this a slightly different issue than the very vexed question I have tussled with before of how much poetry should indulge in fiction or transparently represent some form of truth, because this issue is less one of veracity and more one of verisimilitude. In short, how believable should poetry be? How realistic, rather than how real? Should we paint word pictures of that which is, was, and yet may be, or jet off into the realm of the strictly counterfactual, in the sense of that which cannot be true? And as a subset of this question, or a related one, how much should poetry mirror life even as it necessarily distorts it to some degree through artistic license?

Obviously there is a space for the counterfactual, fictive, even fantastic in poetry. As with any other art form, it is in a sense ridiculous to claim to restrict what poetry can or cannot be used, or attempt to be used, to show, represent, or engage with. So this question is not simply whether poetry can be fictional, but occupies a part of that troublesome space which overlaps the questions "should it?" and "how should it engage with reality even after it has passed into fiction?"

I do not expect to find or relate a full answer here, but merely to attempt to move towards one. I believe that poetry ought to engage with the real and remain with the realistic as far as it can while still moving towards its artistic goal; that is, I believe that poetry draws serious force from its connection to the depiction of that which seems to be plausible, realistic, or otherwise connected to reality or truth, and that abandoning that connection should only be done with great care, under conditions of deliberate artistic contemplation, and subject to an awareness of how severing that connection affects the poem and its effects.

This does not mean no fiction, only a retention of the link back to an imaginatively plausible reality behind the fiction. The situation and expression should, as far as possible within artistic limits, be and remain within the limits of what can be translated by a receiving mind as part of a potential truth, whether or not they are so, since this will I believe produce superior - as in more powerful, more moving, more affective and effective - effects. Absurdism and surrealism do have an artistic place, of course, but I believe the points where such a place is warranted and located are few and must be carefully chosen. As a general rule, poetry should attempt to maintain the appearance of a possible link to reality, or to plausibility within a given set of circumstances.

It is this latter condition which for me incorporates fantasies like, to step outside of sonnets alone, John Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci." This is implausible in a strict sense, but within the world conditions set up in the poem, merely weird, not surreal. It establishes a world, and is internally consistent within that world; what is more, one can see how people are still people in that world. The plausibility arises from the thought that in those - admittedly fantastic - circumstances, one could conceive of a normal actor acting in those ways. The setting is fantastic, but within it the action is not.

The issue of how exactly to walk this tightrope of imagined plausibility is one for another time, but the issue of whether to do so is the one I wished to raise here. I believe poetry is most often more empowered to affect the reader where plausibility within circumstances is maintained. Further, I believe that maintaining that link to plausible reality ought to be the default, with deviations from it justified by careful thought, rather than the other way around.

Hips

You always sway a little when you walk
Not just because you're often on your toes,
And not enough to make the gossips squawk
That you are drunk, or buzzed up on No-Doz,
But just a little, to each side and back,
To indicate your gender in your stride:
It's a reminder of what we men lack
In how you undulate from side to side.
It's almost hypnotizing to observe
The way you move without being aware
Of how with every step your hips will swerve;
And in a way, it almost isn't fair.
Your every movement has a grace and draw
That I can never see except with awe.

Retirement

I could not care much less how you do things
As long as they do not affect me much.
An air of unimportance tightly clings
To all you do - it has you in its clutch.
Of course I used to care; who didn't then?
But now time wanders on and so do I.
I do not think that I will care again,
And honestly, you needn't ask me why.
We, all of us, have moved on past your prime,
And know we have, and therefore moved past you.
It isn't that you weren't of note one time,
But times will change - in fact, they always do.
So let it go, accept the life you lead:
To try to ask for more is merely greed.