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marginal verse

What I love about poetry is the possibility it allows you to capture the little moments in life, in short bursts of expression, and gives you a way to put completely random observations into the verbal equivalent of little perfume bottles to be brought out and opened at will, to give one a whiff of a mood, a moment, an idea, an event.

For me, poetry provides an escape from the humdrum. Or perhaps it is more correct to say it allows me to see what exists in the folds of linear time. For instance, when I was sitting watching my students labour over their examination, my mind wandered and wondered about other kinds of writing....

Advice to authors

 If you want to write books
about people unlike yourself,
you must bare your eyes
and look closely
so that the middle-class crust
that shields you
from offense of the sensory kind,
doesn't keep you from
seeing/smelling/touching/tasting
the entirety of life,
including that
which is behind the garbage heap
and buried under mounds of yesterday's trash
or locked behind the 
drunken abuser's door
and shoved into the dirty dark corners
of the street at midnight.
Of course, it's easier to sample luxury and wealth,
to imagine the curse of plenty--
that, I can get used to, in my head.
Poverty, on the other hand,
can be a bit too rare
for the vegan's palate.
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Comments

vidya said…
real good poem. loved this. i am so glad i connected with you.
5:22 PM
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