Poetry, an Innocuous Toxicity
Nothing we write really matters…except our poetry
We are the stuff of Sappho’s passion,
Lost for ages to rage-ruled fashion.
We find words. We make them ours.
We wear them, share them, flare their powers
(for a few hours).
We breathe every poison and its antidote
While chasing our own asymptote.
Like the drip, drip, drip of icicle drops
When winter frosts melt,
We matter, even when poetry fades
Our voices unheard, words unfelt.
We are matter — and all that matters
We make so.
© 2022 Tom Tordillo. All rights reserved.
In response to Connie Song, The Poisoned Pen. One poet may write to another, or invoke or refer to another poet while actually intending commentary for others.
Unlike the myriad distractions of the day, these sorts of ‘dialogues’ might traverse centuries (Virgil challenging Homer ), or decades (Eliot attacking Swinburne). Sometimes, words sit in forgotten fragments for centuries, then some other soul reads them, touches or twists them, conceiving some new identity familiar to everyone that had always been just so perfect but inapparent.
Identities exist, persist, but names and labels do not except when words make such things matter. Poetry injects permanence into words.
