Poetry Slammed

I saved them. All the lovelorn, angst ridden, what’s it all about lot of them. They were resting peacefully in a notebook where all teenage poetry goes to die. Like a gravedigger stealing bodies for medical science, I went to the back of the drawer and dug them out. They weren’t misty water colored, they were just musty. It was like watching the undead slowly slog their way toward me. I could not look away as I read them with the same horror and dread I would feel seeing an actual zombie.

When Bob Dylan is the poet of your generation the bar is high. Blowin in the Wind is the first Dylan song I remember. I was seven years old when it came out. Even so, I knew a wordsmith when I heard one. Which is why I can’t for the life of me understand why I kept on going with the poetry thing. I’m guessing (or hoping) I never actually reread mine after I wrote them. This is the lie I’m telling myself so I can sleep better at night.

I definitely saw poetry in song lyrics, because interspersed with my (shudder) poems were the lyrics of songs that resonated with me. More often than not I came back to Dylan. Maybe it was because I could howl along with him and pour my heart out in the singing of it all. Anyone could sing with Bob and not feel lacking. Or maybe it was because as my poems indicated, I broke just like a little girl. Either way, while I can enjoy a song that’s easy to dance to, I only love a song that means something.

I also loved Laurence Furlenghetti, a beat poet. EE Cummings and Khalil Gibran both shared the same space in my notebook. My favorite poem about New York City to this day is Taxi Cab Evening by Paul Mones. Sadly I couldn’t find it online to share with you. I found it once in a thing called a book. You know, before Kindles. “Taxicab evening, a subway sunset with Sabrett’s hotdogs bobbling in steamy water, overcoat eyes watching platform asses, walk, don’t walk, excuse me miss” are the opening lines. It paints a picture of my NYC, as it was while I was growing up in the late sixties early seventies.

Bob Dylan said that a poem is a naked person, so be kind as I share one of my old ones with you. From the divine, Bob Dylan, to the “well it doesn’t make me cringe”, I give you some of teenage me.

Murky water color sea

India ink

Life lines on a page

Guitar strings cry from the depths

With flower blue eyes that tell stories

Time passes

Smoke curls upward and coffee is consumed

A fragile soft soul

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