Why Poems
For Someone Who Asked
They asked me straight:
why poetry?
if you want to write, just write…
what’s the point?
I didn’t answer right away.
said I’d come back with something
that deserved the question.
so here it is:
some truths won’t walk
a straight line.
they stumble, circle back,
need room to breathe wrong.
prose takes the easy route…
the motorway: straight, indifferent,
fast, cold, barren,
a path of little effort.
poetry is resounding all around,
the lines that bring a tear,
the rap you can’t get out of your ear,
the echo that won’t let you rest.
prose wants to arrive…
point A to point B,
neat, efficient,
like it all makes sense.
and sure, that works fine
for most things.
grocery lists. divorce papers.
the news.
but poetry writes around the thing,
through the thing.
it doesn’t explain grief…
it is the grief,
the sound of grief,
the exhaustion in your mouth
when you say
do not go gentle.
because some experiences
aren’t facts.
they’re texture.
the way light hit water
that one afternoon
when you were eighteen,
and everything that mattered
was already gone.
the shock of seeing your own life
rearranged by your son’s autism diagnosis,
and seeing the doctor looking at you.
watching the sun set, over your favourite place,
when you're leaving for the last time in the morning
these things die
under direct description.
they need images,
line breaks that pause
where pause means something,
words chosen because they sound
angry
or bewildered
or tender as a bruise.
poetry keeps words
from dying of overuse.
it makes “love” mean something again
after everyone’s worn it down to nothing.
creates new ways of seeing
what was always there.
every good phrase you use without thinking…
someone wrote as poetry first.
why poetry instead of just writing?
because sometimes
the subject demands
you break the container.
the form is the meaning.
the white space matters.
the echo matters.
a poet writes
because prose
would be a lie.
and I don’t have time
for lies anymore.
— UpsilonA
No more lies. 💜