The Day I Found Poetry
The day I found poetry
I already knew,
having had it come out
of me in bloody and ear-curling
twists for which I had no name.
The day I found poetry
I knew I would never be the same.
The day I found poetry
I knew I would
never be as elegant as those
upon whom the canon
of English literature was based,
nor would I have as interesting
lives or thoughts,
or words, as so many
who became the heroes
of Beat and outsider poetry.
The day I found poetry
I was born.
The day I found poetry
or rather, it found me,
I saw the power of words as wonders,
I saw words making magic
of the ordinary and often ignored.
The day I found poetry
I saw words
being levers, being bullets,
being the god that creates the zeitgeist
for change that was otherwise beyond imagining.
The day I found poetry
I knew that words
could be medicine, a salve,
a symptom of something greater
than the writer, the reader, or even the sum of the parts.
The day I found poetry
I was blessed.
