a poem by Taylor Fox, also known as Star Ringer, who you can find on FurAffinity and Bluesky.
Read by Solomon Harries, the Cuddly Badger Dad.
- he/him
- thevoice.dog/
Co-host of the Voice of Dog podcast. Award-winning writer. Waiting for the world to end.
Because I can't really tell you what it is, other than "not 'prose'", which is defining something in negative relation to another thing equally vague.
Like, I can tell you a million of the conventions for the process of making it, but if you sat me down at a desk across from you and told me to define it clearly and what compels me to make poetry when and the way I do, I would panicked-dog-scramble for the nearest exit. There is something abstruse and ephemeral about it I cannot grasp, which does not stop me from making it and appreciating it.
Also, I do not "get" poetry. No one has ever written a poem for or about me to my knowledge. It's not like I don't know poets or artists, but I've never been a subject. Honestly I rarely get gifts of that nature at all any more. Part of it is having both my partners living with me and neither of them being poetically inclined, gifts tend to be in person and physical or "physical". Idk.
This is Microblogvember! We're going off of @NoelBWrites's Microblogvember prompt list!
There are schools of thought where thinking must needs work like thin magnetics,
Aligning every glittering gear with every last ball-bearing,
So that the world is dissected by 'if and only' statements
To categories perfect, and to crystal clear declensions.
But these are not the only orthodoxy we've invented,
And mother nature does not write in dictionary dryness.
So many things cross over, as in limina-like haunting,
From one sphere to another, quite unconscious of the border.
So thus the poor philosopher, confound by a plucked chicken.
So thus the gender binary is broken into spectrum.
So thus the evolutioning, through fire and love and hunger,
From wolf upon the frozen steppes to squeaky bone and walkies.
I would not look for poetry in any definition.
But in the density of truth constraint of form imposes,
Like carbonated soda bottle, contents under pressure,
Like oak limbs grown thrice thicker, from holding up the ivy,
Like depth of feeling shown but by the effort to contain it.
For even in free verse, the plain truth that plain prose speaks plainly
Is crystalized, is sanctified, to a mosaic icon.
And does the halo make the icon? Or the jeweled letters?
The colors of the tesserae? The linden wood unblemished?
The weeks of prayer and fasting before brush may meet with palate?
Or is it in enthronement in the shrine or sanctuary
That painting or mosaic or stained glass becomes an icon?