23 - Ars Poetica

#NaPoWriMo Day 23 and I wrote a piece of free verse inspired by the prompt from the official(ish) NaPoWriMo site of “ars poetica”, which is a poetry standard I didn’t have a name for before reading that – I always called it ‘metapoetry’ – writing poetry about poetry, or, more specifically here: writing poetry about why I write poetry, or what I think it is. Behold!

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the twenty-two preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/fayroberts/posts/ars-poetica-165559094

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This is us – naked, yet wearing masks,
asking you to hold hands with our
solipsistic scribbles, dip toes
into the straits between outcrops,
pop across the water for sustenance, or style.
(We’d bid you stay, but there are others to explore…)

We’re waving flags so you don’t have to,
or maybe because not to do so would
render us even more helpless –
if we stop outlining the world, will it
live up to its threats and tip over?
(Silence feels deadly at times like this.)

And, either way, maybe we’re only
semaphoring ourselves, leaving clues
in the gaps for Future Us to dig
fingertips into, nod wisely over,
then clamber onto the drystone foundations
(build higher, further, faster).

In the end, I know I’m doing this
for all the reasons above, and for
the dopamine release of seeing my words
click into place behind others’ eyes,
the fun of stacking and tangling sounds
(and because I struggle to perform a drawing…)

Another drawing done by me as a strong No Thanks to GenAI images; imperfect, but mine.