/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.439764]

You can't order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, "I'll take two"
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, "Here's my address,
write me a poem," deserves something in reply.
So I'll tell you a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn't understand why she was crying.
"I thought they had such beautiful eyes."
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.

[Anonymous No.439765]

I've read this somewhere before

[Anonymous No.439769]

-Naomi Shihab Nye

[Anonymous No.439771]

I like it. Keep writing. Try harder, though.

[Anonymous No.439774]

>>439771

[Anonymous No.439775]

This was in response to all of the "write a poem about so and so" threads. Poems take effort. Poems have messages. Poems are art- not something you can throw together using a couple of metaphors and big words.

[Anonymous No.439786]

>>439775
In my context only- in real life, the poem was sent via. mail to a young boy who requested the poet to write him a poem for a Language Arts class by giving her his address.