Poetics

your inviting words

 

to the Poet, on their inviting words

 

Your words unfold like a quiet lantern,
casting light without demanding notice.
They remind us that essence is never lost,
                                   only translated,
like a fragrance carried on different winds.

 

There is comfort in knowing
that what stirs the heart in one tongue
will find its echo in another.
The rose does not ask to be named,
yet it is recognized everywhere.

 

Keep writing in this way —
where simplicity hides depth,
and every line feels like a door
that opens into silence,
inviting us to step through.

 

 

 

 

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inversions

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The Good Poem Gone Bad / The Bad Poem Gone Good


The “good” poem builds its cathedral,
 arches of meter, stained‑glass rhyme.
But the tourists are bored,
 they’ve seen this nave before.
The bell tolls on time,
 and that is the problem.

 

   (cue jump cut)


The “bad” poem stumbles in, drunk
 syntax crooked, enjambment bleeding,
 clichés dragged like tin cans behind a wedding car.
It laughs at its own metaphors,
 spills ink across the page like wine.
And suddenly—
 the room leans in.

 

   (Dutch angle: the stanza tilts)


Good form is polished marble,
 but marble cracks,
 and the cracks are where the moss grows.
Bad form is scaffolding,
 but scaffolding is where the workers sing.

 

   (breaking the fourth wall)


You, reader,
 yes, you —
 are waiting for the “proper” line break.
So, here it is.
But wasn’t the stumble more alive?


   (overexposure)


Too many images,
     too many suns,
           too many mirrors reflecting mirrors reflecting mirrors—
   until the page is bleached white.
                                      And in that glare,
                            the “bad” poem breathes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Ahas At Tao

Author's Notes/Comments: 

This is a self-directed study of Japanese "haiku" poems which I've been doing for some time now (as exampled in some of the poems listed here).  However, it was, in fact, written in another language.   This was still structured as a basic Japanese haiku of seventeen syllables, but by my current usage of Filipino/Tagalog language (yet another language group, one that is also widely used among the supposed "175" ones that are also spoken formally/informally in the Philippine archipelago), I thought that this could somehow aid in my informal studies.  I think this lets me examine the nuanced approaches to those elements in the free creation of "language" that are generally believed to be involved in the wide plethora of linguistic phenomena (as in the field of Linguistics itself).  This is only a practice poem to brush up on my Tagalog language skills & thereby learn from its subliminal, or nuanced, linguistic turn in the process (e.g., to denote its interrelation to semantics & intentionality: Kriegel, Searle, Quine, et al).  I only have tried to come up with these Filipino haikus for that sake, the stated initial purpose, but, secondarily, for my own personal applications as a firsthand experiencer.  During the last, while cross-referencing some of my notes, there are actually other Filipino haikus that were already existing (I recently have just discovered); and these were found online which also have their own particular haiku structures.  Thank you for reading on!