I’ve started writing some poetry lately, not because I’m a poet, but because I think it’s an important discipline to make my writing more creative. There are some things that can be said through poetry that can’t be expressed otherwise. And I’m sharing them here once again, not because I think they’re any good as far as poetry goes, but because I think that there are some ideas that come out of them that are not able to come through other forms of writing.
This first one is about how sometimes our best intentions and our proposed solutions seem like good ideas from where we sit, but they are not at all natural to the environment or the culture that we’re trying to introduce them to. Sometimes it’s better for us to just listen to the nature of it all rather than try to make it better.
The Lights
There aren’t supposed to be lights here
Only stars and treefrogs
and the moonlit clouds.
Then again Man always seems
to stain the purity of it all.
“Innovation” he says.
But is it better to illuminate
than to train the eyes to see
how things look
from the point-of-view
of the evening dew
itself, invisible?
Ignoring the invitation,
Nature’s original intention
To dance in the dark
with the stars and the treefrogs
and the moonlit clouds.
Listen to her whisper,
“This is what I call Clarity.”
This second poem is just meant to reflect what most of my day to day life is like working here trying to manage a nonprofit that depends on foreign means of support which also means foreign understandings of the way things are “supposed to” work in the world.
Managing a Nonprofit
Siting in the gas station
waiting for the bones to fall
Sweating
The guy next to me
deemed deodorant
unnecessary today.
And the fan’s not oscillating
The wind’s not coming my way
Nothing is coming my way
Stagnant.
I can taste the poverty,
my poverty
It’s a bitter drop of salt water
choking me.
Tap, tap, tap, and send out a plea
A reminder
A desperate cry
A dirty offer to sell my body and soul
But it’s already 4:00.
My time, not at the bank
so I refine the lie
that I began to craft
when I woke up this morning
No, in my dreams last night
Or the day that I came here
for why
the bones didn’t fall.
beautiful. eloquent. thanks for sharing your truth, frustration and Hope. poetry is indeed a wonderful way to share what sometimes cannot be stated in prose.