As a poet, I still don't know
what poetry even is. Is it
normal sentences separated
in odd ways to make it look
more meaningful than it really is?

Is poetry only real when it has
meter and rhyme?

Does my poetry mean less if it reads
like how I think and write if I were
to pen a letter to a lover or a friend
I've not seen in a long while?

If the seven, once hanging Mu'allaqat
are the best of what poets have to offer,
then is a one liner that has no companion
to be paired with a sorry bastard of a poem?

Who knows, other than God,
the answers to all amorphous things?

I know poetry when I see it though,
it's at least concrete enough,
much like how you would know
a jinni when you see something
wholly unnatural. Jinns are at least
discernable enough, smokeless as they are.

Perhaps that is the beauty of poetry,
the magic of language that can't be
fully constrained into a sandbox
of syllable counts and stresses.

What does it matter, really,
so long as it's fun to write,
sweet to read, or bitter, or both,
so long as it ignites and comes alive?



© Walyullah