What was the poet trying to say?
They used to ask us in school
Oh how I miss those days, doing the works
of Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Frost
Over time, we have become so tone deaf
and monotone in our perception
of what poetry is and how and what
we hear to be poetry
reminds me of a post dispensation period
when every TV show was about the struggle
and every theme was political
Film production, has since moved past those days
It\'s clear our poetry hasn\'t
Whispers are never heard
all we hear and consider, is praise poetry
We are not concerned with the abstract
reading the subtle writer\'s mind
hearing their avantgarde frequency
low candid tone and processing
what they have to say
nor admiring their window view
The obscure and nuanced is not our thing
we mostly want praise and gallantry
no subtleties and in-betweens
our stimulus, confines in the spirit of tributes
commemorations and praise
We have no room for intrigue
and no patience to deliberate, thus
the voice in the reader\'s ear should emancipate
to read as the writer wrote, lest this becomes
the only poetry we know
I foresee this to be read and set aside
conversational writers such as myself
have become used to that sort of thing
the oddities in normalized status quos
The complicated ones
coloring outside rhetoric lines
Besides, not only does this touch a nerve
it does not even rhyme