Poetry rocks 

Poetry of rock and rap. I hear it day after radio day. Great stuff for the car, in the shower, on voice mail.

"Dreams last so long. Even after you are gone. I'm on your side."

"I can feel something inside me say, I really don't think you're strong enough."

I'm awed there are so many people writing.

"I asked for a kiss. You gave me six. Whose pupil were you? You became masterful, full of kindness ... not of this world."

"The roses had the look of flowers that are looked at."

Some of us around town have been playing with words sans music.

Music or no music. Just as good. Just different. Sometimes the spoken word hits deeper than the song. For example, "Upon my back. Upon our bed. I feel your form touch mine again" doesn't need music. Gets in there plenty. Doesn't matter who wrote it. We've all lived it.

Few can manage the melody to "Pave Paradise. Put up a parking lot." But we'll always remember those words.

Sometimes the melody is what gets us. Like, "Tell me lies. Tell me lies. Tell me sweet little lies." Writing that, I can't get away without the song line passing over and over the convolutions of my brainwaves.

But onwards. In the following poem, I think a melody would destroy the impact.

"a simple poem/linear as glaciers/raking mountainsides/a forest full of futile paths for human war/mere toothpicks in the way of glacial man/a grave for unaware mankind

torn trees of war/a simple poem for simple times/for humans/a simple death/earth is lost"

Yet without that poem, how little I would have thought about those feelings and images.

I've tried my hand and I like it. I've filled my ears, and despite the poetic injunction that "I can't get no satisfaction," I got satisfaction. Some of the best words tell us one thing, letting us feel something else underneath them.

So I write to tell myself to write. To satisfy my need to write.

And I listen to satisfy my need to hear rock, rap, blues, country and western, gospel, opera and the poetry now filling the halls of our towns. "Look for it," I say to myself. "It will look after me."

"Arise, oh my love/my beautiful one and come with me/behold the winter is past/the rains are over and gone and flowers appear on the earth/the season of singing has now come."