After rain, or tears, have extinguished flames of many candles, diminished now to stiff wax puddles from last night or the one before that.
Flowers wilted on the street, solemn vigil is over, but anger remains. Community grief is necessary. People hurt together, even heal together. When allowed.
Until next night, or the one after that. Another mass shooting, traffic stop or another situation where race meets hate. Another protest over another death. Never changes.
Again and again, lives once lived, stories told, never-ending headlines. Grief forever knows no boundaries. Another night, another life gone. Hate makes waste.
Why don’t you meet me in Paris? Half a globe away, another lifetime. They write songs about the city, in April. I have never been. In any season. Spring has yet to find its way here, so Paris awaits. Rendezvous. City of lights, city for lovers. Should we not taste all Paris could be? Could we not see nights from a tiny apartment, streets below filled with people like us. Experience I do not yet know, but I desire to feel the city against your skin.
I have been told one night in Paris is like a year in any other place. Language I do not understand, but the art speaks to me. Culture not found anywhere but Paris. History unto itself. Art knows no boundaries, no geographic space, yet Paris, as I have been led to believe, is the capital city. Hemingway wrote of Paris, Fitzgerald as well. Picasso found poetry in Paris, the painter found himself, adopted the city, or it him.
Artists, from anywhere, are meant to spend time in Paris, to discover, to recover, from wherever they have lived. You don’t get that feeling anywhere else. Or so I am told. I need Paris. I would write in Paris, I would paint, perhaps on the street, because I can only imagine what others have lived. I can only imagine. In Paris. In poetry. In April. We would meet in Paris, we may never leave.
“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” -Albert Einstein
Too long now I’ve been trying to find the essence of poetry, to break it down to a simple format or formula, and completely understand how it moves and why it speaks.
It can’t be all that difficult, I supposed, for if something as significant as the Special Theory of Relativity can be explained so simply and eloquently, why couldn’t then be poetry.
E = mc2
In demonstrating that mass and energy are the same, Albert Einstein used but a few letters to universally explain. Admitting though, at the time, the concept itself was somewhat above the average mind.
Physics, calculus, and specialized sciences have always made use of equations to express a question or solution for every occasion. In mathematics, a rule or principal is frequently spelled out in algebraic symbols. With math, or chemistry, equations quantify anything large into something more compact, like poetry does within the boundaries of language.
Formulas are easily understood by those familiar with the topic, but difficult for those without specific knowledge. One need not acquire specific wisdom to understand, enjoy, and write poetry.
Simply stated (without an equation), prose and verse is about life. Poetry is logic.
Although logic, and life itself, gets complicated, it is more easily understood in poetic form. Like life itself, poetry is not a concept unfamiliar to us; it is expression of the soul and of the senses. We have been surrounded by poetry since we were mere babes, weaned on nursery rhymes and raised with music, popular lyrics consciously or subconsciously showing us rhythm and meter and cadence and phrasing. Each of us has an inner knowledge of poetry, whether we admit it or not.
So, like Einstein’s E and m and c, can we not find an equation for poetry? It’s not a complicated question like Why doesn’t the moon crash into the earth? Or it shouldn’t be. So I continue searching for something that should be rudimentary, but with a subject so seemingly simple, why has this search become more of a quest?
Each day, with an open mind and a cluttered desk, or a wandering mind at a sunlit park bench, I try to put my thoughts to rest. I imagine it should be simple like the X and Y of equations gone by, but will chose my own letters and continue to try.
My L can represent Love and my S might be sorrow, Y may be yellow (colours are a precious tool to play with, and to borrow). V, of course, is volume or velocity, and T, well time is a given, as now it might be.
So I come up with something that seems to make sense, except mornings, before coffee, when my mind is so bloody dense.
P=S ± (T+e) /V x L [m/L + s/L + f/L ]+A x π+g x M
Poetry equals Senses plus or minus time and emotion, divided by the velocity of our motion. We can only feel those feelings at times we cannot express, but they are there, they are whole, even when they’ve gone amiss.
And then there is Love; mindful love and soulful love or lustful love, dying love, a love not returned or acknowledged, even so it must so be added. Love goes to the highest power, for it may be the most basic tenet of poetry.
Your attitude, on any given day, impacts the circumference of your being; easily marked with the symbol Pi, it’s not how hard you live, but how hard you try. Throw in a little geography, the places we’ve travelled or the settings of which we dream, and with it all it is mind over matter. So make it matter, as poetry does.
Now, I’ve never been much with mathematics, or any of its sub-genres or derivatives, preferring study of the less absurd; the uncalculated pleasures of the profound written word. But my lesser knowledge of calculus, or trigonometry, cannot take away from what is a part of me.
So I, in many ways, use a basic math. You add feelings, time references, and thought, divide up your musings and subtract the words that get in the way. Then it gets messy, for many times the words preventing you from moving ahead are unspoken and can’t be said and therefore must only be represented by an X, Y or a Z, but can’t always be summed up with an M or a C.
The thing is, I don’t want my letters to simply represent something, I want them to be part of it; a piece of everything poetry is and what it stands for.
My letters form words, and yes my S might not be sorrow, but it can also sizzle, sensual, or a shadow. The T is part of temptation and tsunami, and is even part of style. And the beloved X works well for a xenophile, or an easyexit, the text on which we rely. My words are whole and my words are true, they represent a life shared by me, or by you. Whether linear, or constructive, or lyrical verse, words become quite ubiquitous, or sometimes even terse.
So as simple as poetry is, it can seem very complicated. There are no equations, quotients, and its powers can’t be expressed by number. It cannot be squared, it simply has to be free and a poem cannot be summed up by an E, m, or C. Poetry in all its forms, be it whispered or spoken from pages torn, in all the states or divinity might better be expressed by nothing less, or more, than infinity.
Gather, you beggars. Assemble like pigeons, seeking morsels of kindness on these filthy city streets. We notice but do not acknowledge. Or apologize.
I cannot deal with all I see.
Any spare change? No answer. No chance. I saunter by in my warm parka, well-rested, belly full of breakfast. I know no hunger, though not immune to the pang. Sunglasses shield my eyes. I have witnessed too much.
There, but by the grace of God, go I.
They remain. Unrecognizable even to those who have loved them. A person’s sister, somebody’s brother, somebody’s child. A somebody; another vacant bed or private hell another excuse or story to tell.
We do not want to hear.
Nor dare to breathe. Ask no questions. I am only what I ask myself to be. If charity begins at home, what then of the homeless? Nothing. I know where I will sleep tonight.
Coffee, fresh shirt, plans and rationalizations see us through another day. So it goes, each day commences with hope. It has to. Something has to. Deadly sins we keep within; bigotry, dishonesty, infidelity. Silently, we weather a toxic environment. We live. We learn. How long until the coffee becomes bitter, or cold? When will a shirt become creased, or stained? Which knowledge is lost and what remains? When do old habits return as mistakes? Again. Have we become complacent to lies we are sold, or those we spit out? And we do. Rarely do we say what we mean. Each sentence a vapour trail. The previous, the past, or the pathetic catches up by three, or by five. This is how we live, or how we will die. No aspirations. No sorrow. Dawn to dusk, twilight then starlight. weary or resentful, we will rest and repeat tomorrow. Again. Hope returns. It has to. Faith.
