Incoherent Thoughts Organized Into Neat Paragraphs

The Lament of The Amateur Poet

I just don't think I'm sad enough to be a poet.

Maybe I am more reader than writer.

I just know how it feels when you read or hear something so real and so true that you want to stitch it into your skin.

They say write what you know but what if you don't know... Anything.

My fingers itch for words.

I reach for them but the right ones always seem to be just out of reach.

I stretch my hands out toward letters and syllables, I open my arms to them in hopes that the right ones will stumble into my heart like soulmates finally colliding after a far too long wait.

I collect words and place them on my shelf. Dusting my lexicon, running my fingers over the spine of every definition, seeing which will call out to me.

My only hope is that I can string my sentences together in such a way that will speak to the soul of someone who hears it.

I always liked the idea of being a poet.
But I've never been any good at rhyming.
Does a poem have to rhyme?
Do I have to sort my senteces into schemes?
Do I have to know what Im doing?

Is a poem still a poem if no one ever reads it?
Is a poet still a poet if she just writes for herself?

What If the only book she ever writes is handwritten with insecurity and embellished with doodles?

What if she doesn't write to fill a room but to fill a notebook?
If the only slamming she does is her head on the desk?
If her thoughts are incoherent?
If her rhyme is erratic?
If her writing is messy?
If every word aches to be let out but once its released onto to the page she tucks it under the bed.
It curls up there, awaiting her return.

My poems are indoor cats
I just dont think they could make it in the wild.

They haunt the house in my head and sometimes I think about introducing them to the neighbors but then it would be real.

Nevertheless,

I want to write a poem.

The poem.

The poem that sings your smile awake and pulls your soul to the surface.

I want to write the poem that sparks something in someone, or in me.

I want to write something that speaks to someone the way the words of others have spoken to me.

But sometimes it's as if we speak just to be speaking and we write for the sake of the snaps.
I do not write to sound good, I write to be understood.

I breathe words in because they are the sweetest scent.

There is a reason we put words to paper.

The pages may not be able to create oxygen anymore but they can still put breath in the lungs.

I have found that words put life back into tired bodies.

A good poem makes your ribs lean forward,
Your eyerows sit up.

Words make worn out faces alight and excite something deep within us all that just wants to hold hands with another tired soul, to know we aren't alone.

Words have always made me felt less alone.

So maybe I will never write the poem.

Maybe none of my stories will ever be sensational.

But they are mine.

And if something I say could possibly spark something in you,

If the light hits this poem in just the right way if even for a moment,

If any of my recycled words make you feel less alone,

Then I suppose there is a point to this poem and perhaps that makes me a poet.