I hope to one day have the confidence and presentation skills to say this at a high end poetry recital. Fuck you guys!
“Where’s your meter?” he said?
As if to dismiss every inkling and war that’s gone through my head,
So you want me to conform to your rules instead?
Don’t worry,
With prose like ours, metronomes vanish,
Besides this language I use, is only English.
You see it’s a matter of tragedy,
That whilst you were in the dark ages, we’re the ones who mastered poetry.
Writing rules become prison bars,
For those who can’t see far,
Beyond their spectacle dented noses,
They can only pose as,
We drop words on pages,
And give sermons like Moses.
Yeah, he once had a lisp and lacked the confidence,
Raised his heart to his Lord,
And became a poetic prophet with vengeance.
Spat truth so deep forced the people repentance,
Had them submitting before he finished a sentence.
So you really want to do this word dance?
Wanna’ take a chance?
Lift your fists, avant garde,
When you’ve never taken a fighters stance?
You want to pose your attention at the words I write?
Try to catch me out of sync and turn out my light?
Fault my meter dull my rights to write?
Because you have some poetry insight?
Bitch please, sit yourself back down,
Yeah….. Over there, in that corner, wear your frown,
Leave us be, no in fact turn around,
We don’t want your input, ya’ pompous clown.
To all the lazy snobbery elite, too pompous to explore anything other than what they deem high society poetry, looking down on younger generations trying as they may to make words their lives in whatever style they know, be it rap, spoken word, written word, hip hop or poetry.
You do this full time and struggle with your lives,
Whilst we do it second nature, part time,
Because beneath our breasts are unsettled hives!
-W.E.
p.s. Inspired by a cool poet when she mentioned something about meter, and not really being aware of it, like as if that was the pre-requisite to being able to write. But this has been brewing for a couple of weeks as I read more and more articles of poetry snobbery and listened to bickering about what is or isn’t poetry. She has an amazing ability to write and I am glad she wasn’t dismayed (as are many youth and even adults) from words and poetry. Whatever it is your style, enjoy words, they can heal or at least help get you through things.
p.p.s. Check out this ultra cool Australian Luka Lesson at Australia’s most popular poetry slam hands down. Bankstown Poetry Slam
