I always put the fork down,
and eat with my hands.
I’ve always thought poetry was a bit snobby and self-aware.
But I get it now.
Language is exhausting. I’m tired of reading prose. And I’m (been) tired of writing it.
So I’ll try this, to practice reading and writing in this way.
It’s either this, or nothing at all. Sorry lol.
I said I wouldn’t write prose, but just to explain poetry in a sentence, because it does require sort of getting to a point in life, before you understand what its function is.
It’s a sort of middle-aged thing, that you begin to understand once you’ve (futilely) circumnavigated the philosophical globe.
It is to say that, at the end, all there is is experience. Presence. Moments. Imagery. Sensation.
So poetry is a way to use language, which is often so futile, to paint a picture. The point of the picture isn’t to communicate. It’s just to be a picture.
Needless to say, I still do not understand most poetry. Nor do I know how to write it.
But I’ll start here.
Surely the first rule of poetry is that you do not write a footnote explaining what your poem is about. But in this case, because I am wearing training wheels, I thought I should, briefly:
I was thinking about a major fork in my life (some 10-15 years ago), and wondering what would have happened if I traveled down the other road (in this case, it was about moving to San Francisco to join a startup).
And finally today it hit me: I would have just moved back home after a year or less 😂 That was most certainly the outcome.
(Also, I do always end up eating with my hands, quite literally. Utensils can be so inefficient.)