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The Poetry Pond
By Paul Cameron Brown
Everyone is a poet, or so the philosopher said. The world teems
with poetry in much the sense the universe teems with life.
A poet or two is squirrelled away in every major office.
Boiler rooms hum with the tooth and nail, robust imagery of
working class poets. The neurological desire to express oneself
transcends even social barriers. Be creative, like a brain surgeon.
My scalpel runneth over amongst all those cerebral ganglia.
The mind washed clean, scrubbed down. Words burn holes on the
paper. Firemen disguised as poets douse the heroic flames.
Sherpas tightly drawn amidst depths of a Himalayan winter
weather a torrent of words. Groggy, I search for breath, am given
oxygen but see writing materials.
In the future, everyone will be famous for five minutes.
We have been promised this by Andy Warhol.
In the present, a day in the life of the poet is within reach of each of
you, my peers.
Barnum and Bailey's fresh from the publishing scene comes to
town, will train talent or so the sign read. But the Big Top can't
accommodate all the poets. Word jugglers sneak under the tent to
court the ringmaster's favour.
Poetry is a religion, said the neophyte before downing its meagre
fare. A window on life confounding reality, fingering experience.
Feast for the intellect, grace and passion abiding as one. Yet, with
poetry becoming as all things to all men and with every man doing as
right in his own eyes, privateers and other assorted scaliwags, eager to
toss in their lot with the real Empress, lay ransom to this queen of arts.
Somewhere, every person alive has written a book of poems.
Bushel and a peck, common as gravestones.
My mind was a tabla rosa and the poets could not pick it clean.
And me within reach of this uncontrolled mitosis, arspoetica. I
dread "have a nice day," is already a populist poem. Think my
grade 13 biology is hazy but not my ability to count the poets.
I am holding hands with the poets lest we foam too perilously
at the crest.
Sentenced in absentia to torturing words, pulling wings off
proverbial flies, attacking motherhood.
Worse, performing illegal abortions on the craft.
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