Wednesday, October 4, 2023

Based on True Events with Poetic License

To Emylee with Inspiration From Emily
Paul Klusman

My friend Emylee says,
"All my poems lately are crap
And I don't want to write poems anymore."
But I feel like a person has good
And bad poems and the bad
Ones have to get written before

The good ones can emerge from
The heart or the mind or the hand
And make their way onto the page
Where they land

So that others can read them sitting there
Sipping coffee, tea, or beer,
Or wine
And tell themselves exactly which poems
Are terrible and which ones are fine.

So I said, "Write them anyway."
And besides who's to say
What is good and what is bad
Even Emily Dickinson wanted all her
Poems burned that she had

Written when she was alive after she was dead
So she must have thought her poems were bad even though people likely said,
"They're better than the poems I've got bouncing around in my head."
So rather than burning Emily's poems they published them instead

And all the world delighted in the thoughts of a quiet reclusive girl
Who's pen could turn a grain of sand into a pearl

Who's verse would only arrive
After she was gone back in the day
And was lucky to avoid... the trap
Of fame when she was alive
And might have been known to say,
"All my poems lately... are crap."




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