Poetry is the Music of Desperation

Poetry is a survival mechanism--that voice that appears out of the darkness to make sense of the senseless. People do not decided to write poetry, they are driven to it. There is no choice involved. It's something you find yourself doing in the middle of the night that is a better alternative to putting your fist through a mirror or pulling your teeth out. There is very little honesty left in this world, and it its getting to the point where I'd rather someone shook their fist at me rather than shake my hand. The Modern Age has turned everyone into salesmen--and everything is for sale. There are no more prophets, no more sorcerers. Instead of warriors we have soldiers as diplomats (a poor fit). We are overrun by bankers who rob with a fountain pen and legions of accountants bleeding us dry on the installment plan. The sane are turned mad, and the mad called sane. Prisons filled to capacity while psychopaths use the words of holy men as litanies for vengeance.

Meanwhile the earth beneath our feet moves; tidal pools empty and fill. The order before order continues. There will be a time when all is laid silent, when the silence of space will again rule all. As men rise and fall in the game of samsara, there will be a few moved to take up a pen and scrawl a few parting words on a wall--an epitaph, perhaps, but always a prologue as well. Beneath the screams, beneath the cries, beneath the laughter--always moving onward, always becoming. And it is from the act of continual creation that the poet and artist dips his cup, drinks it in and is revitalized. To open one's self up to the stream, especially in the darkest hour, and feel life pulsing there, just below the surface, and to give that form--that is poetry, that is spirit made word.