Get Comfortable

I did it! Forty submissions. Forty shabby stabs at poems, wielded by a scientist. I never have to look at poetry again. I shall bury the grief of it into an assessment.

POP QUIZ!!

What did a science teacher learn after forty days and forty nights of writing poetry? (Circle the correct answer).

A. Words are hard. Like what’s been a bean, if you know what I mean? And why can’t I toodle topples?

B. Rules don’t exist. Meter and feet required, same with rhyming pattern, but also not required because no real good answer.

C. The poem doesn’t have to make sense. No, really. It literally does not have to make any sense. For example;

Children.

Glass clutched

teachings of history

blue whales gather to borders

reunited. I might have fallen in love

Once

for what is feared deeply

D. Poetry is way more complicated than science. Words carry emotional weight, syntax can be broken. Gender sits in a pronoun, and language splits into infinite interpretations. Explain to me, again, how that is all suppose to fit together?

E. Comfort is bullshit. We are post-pandemic. Read your audience, vocal media. That’s right. I also learned about the rhetorical pyramid. I’m a teacher and I'm pissed off. See, I just defined exigence.

F. Pseudonyms are allowed. So are three names. A bird be a bird. Guess who I really am.