a comparison between poetry and dancing
i don’t understand poetry. i don’t understand meter or rhyme or the distinction made between concepts with the words “like” or “as.” i don’t understand what it means to have words roll off the tongue like whiplash, or experience a revelation at the hands of a sonnet by shakespeare. i don’t understand how one can find meaning in a pause, a letter, a period. i don’t understand neruda or siken or cummings or any other name you can throw at me.
i understand dancing. i understand the arch of a foot and the protrusions of bones at an ankle. i understand the cacophony of the union between story and song as flirty shadows glide across stage, the way lips are polished into wide grins, snarls if made sharper. i understand the difference between dancing and dying, bodies rising and falling with a beat, and still, how god or religion or any other deity has nothing to do with either.
i don’t understand poetry.
but i see you and your smile and snarl and your movement and your beauty and violence
and by god, i want to.
i understand dancing. i understand the arch of a foot and the protrusions of bones at an ankle. i understand the cacophony of the union between story and song as flirty shadows glide across stage, the way lips are polished into wide grins, snarls if made sharper. i understand the difference between dancing and dying, bodies rising and falling with a beat, and still, how god or religion or any other deity has nothing to do with either.
i don’t understand poetry.
but i see you and your smile and snarl and your movement and your beauty and violence
and by god, i want to.