Matt Mairs's Poetry

What is poetry? What differentiates it from other forms of written expression? Why do some of us need to write it, while others are unwilling to even read it? My theories, of course, have to do with music as does most of my thought on anything related to the mind. To me, poetry is musical language. It is more about the interaction of rhythm, cadence and time than any other kind of writing I know. My poems are not songs simply because the music hasn't arrived yet. And it might well not before I die, so I commit them to paper nude.
I cannot speak for any of my fellow poets, but I have to believe that, to greater or lesser degree, anyone who creates words on paper and calls it a poem is creating musical language. And often a powerful poem implicitly acknowledges this, whether through onomotopeia, rhythmic structure, rhyme patterns, some other psychological device, or all of the above. And I strongly suspect that this is what turns off those who do not like poetry. Language should be utilitarian, they might say, it should be clear, concise and directed. And poetry is often none of these. It is getting where its going without any respect for Occam`s razor, and where it is going is not necessarily useful to anyone but the author. Of course this is only my incredibly biased opinion.  Now I will shut the hell up and offer the poems. Oh yeah, might be some profanity somewhere...
I have yet to come up with a logical way to group these.  Settle for an illogical one: size!

haiku last modified 12/13/00
other lil un's last modified 4/25/03
mijim un's last modified 4/9/03
beeg un's last modified 4/9/03

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