Internal Memos of C.S.

Living in Poetry

I cannot live in Poetry.

It doesn't work for me and despite wanting to understand it, read it aloud and really try and absorb the words in the moment - it means little to my heart.

I've heard poetry before from people as the prose fell from their mouth conversationally. I've heard poetry before when people etched me notes and tied shining rings to the romantic notions. 

However, I remember when I once believed in poetry because I hadn't been broken down by the pretty language yet. I hadn't heard it a thousand times only for it to not matter when the chips actually fell. People love you to the moon and back until you're showing them to the spaceship.

Beautiful words don't matter. Being a person of your word matters most. Knowing values and honoring them, that matters more than any rhyme brought together through verbage. Action is everything. Words never fade but the heft of them lessens over time when you realize they're just words. There's a reason we only remember a handful of quotes from philosophers, writers... only a fraction of their lives is notable in the grand scheme of a lifetime. Where's the rest of the life they lived? It isn't in words.

Poetry is a reminder of being in a place where you believe in the miracle of forever. It is a reminder that you are a hard, hard woman who can take direction from no-one when it comes to the direction of her life. It is a reminder that you only love people until they show themselves to not be equals in the aspects that matter. Survival can't turn into poetry. There are no wars for you anymore save for internal conflict. Latching onto your ancestors is lovely for theatrics but it matters not when saddled up to the every day luggage that is living.

This is when poetry reminds me that it's meant to coax people into a sense of wonder and imagination and baseless in reality. It is escapism for seconds and those seconds, for someone like me, are well-needed elsewhere. 

I don't need poetry.