Stephen Sutherlin is a designer, poet and musician. He writes poetry about life in the southwest and enjoys metrical lyricism.
I picked this
Flower for you
Because you
Deserve it!
I picked this
Flower for you
For when
You are blue.
I picked these
Flowers for you,
The ones in
Your pictures you keep.
I picked these
Flowers for you
Because you
Are my Mom.
I picked this
Flower for you
And you pressed it
And I kept it
Close to my heart.
I don’t
Want to practice
A dead art.
But you are practicing it
So how can it be dead?
Gone from the memory
Of the people. Lost
Are the words to them.
Confused by broken
Syntax and boiled down
Meanings. Un-reflected
Lives don’t contemplate
Their own depravity in
The face of those surrounding them.
Not enough words for
Comprehension available.
A failing of the Academies?
Lost to glowing gods
That speak of everything
And say nothing. No food
Left for the spirit of inquiry
Lost focus of the digitized mind.
Alas, poetry is dead unless we can resuscitate the culture.
Shrill, shrieking screams
Cold. Violent. Chilling
to hear in the distance
A sharp thud and another
and a scream and more
yelling I can’t understand…
As gentle flakes drift
and sway in the silent wind
A murder
of crows caw and bolt
into flight as the next
wail splits the silence.
Round white globes volley
back and forth
another thud
another scream
as I approach.
Fresh snow, two hands
A shocking cold spray of
force and wet hits your
cheek and sticks
to your glasses.
“Hey, no fair! I said not in the face.”
Auburn poles
From white holes
Paintbrushes
Jammed into soil
Painting the only
Color in the blinding
White mountainside.
A dark cloud rolls
O’er the town
Backlit by street lamps
Burning the midnight oil
As herds of children
In their ‘jams
Drag “experiential” parents
To the steam engine’s boil
For ‘cross this frosty
Little town
Large groups of people
Can be found
Searching for the next Express
Into a time they step
Back in line to board
The old coal and steel
From rail to tail first
Cold winter’s night
They experience the past
As if it were real
And Christmas wishes turn kisses
Into hot chocolate dreams. Awake
They return
Glowing with the magic of the season!
Manganese for iron horse
Pulled from mountains with no remorse
To birth a nation with lines of steel
Nature stripped but never killed
Meteorite from another world
Maybe the lizard’s celestial fuel
Criticism in 2019 is bordering on cruel often seeking to dismantle credibility in the eye of the beholder.
Critical (Analysis) Critiqué (Peer review)
The critic (Siskel and Ebert) is very usually the failed artist. One who knows enough about a form from their own experiments, but orient towards the analysis of said art. I am not saying that I am not open to criticism. Though I prefer to wield it against myself and to question my heroes. I myself a degreed and proper student of literature with an expensive education in letters that is only useful now that I have made a living doing other things. Analysis is perhaps a better word these days. Not so rife with the darkness, our sardonic state of dialogue.
The art of poetry has been dissected, de-constructed, rebuilt, reconstituted, regurgitated, fight over it and derided as unacceptable. I doubt
I offer anything new to its discussion, but I am very interested that poetry not go the way of Latin. I don’t want to practice a dead art.
Think of the
line break
as the natural
flow of your breath.
How does your speech
give cadence?
Ars Poetica 4 Pillars
Clarity | Mystery | Memory | History
Empty streets
only 3 kinds
Driving
Drunks, Cops, Work
4:55am
No cops
Tied up
w/ drunks?
No bodies
in a hurry
to get
to work.
Flight
6:05am
Don’t want
to be late
for the
wait.
Frosted espionage
Creeping sword, reaching
Shard. Lock. Hold. Arc.
Sweeping across smooth glass
Building architecture in
seconds. Barrier to clarity
Corrupting a clear view to the
outside world. Starburst
anemone. Prism prison
rapid takeover from two
opposing forces driving
chemical change. No pattern
repeating. Seemingly permanent…
Blown away with
one hot breath.