Daniel Holden Smith
August 6, 2025
“Poetry, Whadditdo?”
Poetry is so cool
It is a plethora of things
Poetry is performance
A production portraying
our pitfalls and pantheons
becoming playful
Poetry is an airplane
It pulls you up to the pinnacle
of commercial viewpoints.
From a poets POV
It’s quite clear to see
“Shit is insane”.
Poetry is pain, personified
Anguish and ache pressed
into language and shape
If a poem were a person
They’re apt to be more perplexing
Than the Pope pressuring
For a puff of your vape.
“Thou shalt pass it, bro”
Poetry is potential
It helps you perceive people
Like pitch black puffy clouds
When we break,
the rain is torrential.
To pour out our passions
In a purifying fashion
Is essential.
Man! Poetry is so frickin cool.
A poem is a pre-schooler
Who just spotted a spider
And proceeds to pull the pant
Of they’re pal because she
Really wants to show em
To pack our perspective
Into pages of poems is to protect
our plants and ensure
that we grow em.
The poet doesn’t simply walk streets
What we seek is to know them.
To prowl, peruse, and patrol them.
Like a pigeon, we poets
Perched atop powerlines
Poised and wide eyed.
Pooping on the proletariat
And pecking at the peculiar.
And I apologize for saying,
But poetry is police.
Protector, not of peace
But of purpose.
Without a poet’s perceptive pizazz
Our blood pumps putrid and
Our lives are worthless.
Poetry is polyamourous.
That is to say, It fucks.
Person, place, or process
Poetry wants
a PIECE ah that thang.
But sometimes, Poetry is unpalatable
A poison to power pushers.
A push pin in the rears
Of our pre-programmed peers
Who prance around cities
Passing out pity
But when perfectly polished life
Presents a pinch of gritty
They won’t come near.
Isn’t that shitty? But wait…
Poetry is a populace pissed about Diddy
while permitting
cosmically pathetic pricks
to peddle patriarchy to pre-pubescents.
Who’d prefer to
Propagate the persecution
of princesses
Over just being nice!
Poetry is a public park.
A premises without which ideas
Could not find spark.
Pavement made pleasant with
Petunias & peals of laughter
On playsets.
Poetry is poverty;
Make do with what you’ve got.
A poem says “fuck it”
I’ll play percussion on this bucket
Then flip it &
Give these peonies a new pot.
Poetry is poor vision.
Inept at picking out one particle
From another.
A poet sports spectacles tinted
To support life’s spectacles
To see the planet in a person
The prince in a pineapple
The uhh promiscuity of 6 protons
A poet gets supine
That is, to lay on your spine
Facing up at the sky
Spying space from past time
Whispering wow how sublime.
Like us, Poetry is a paradox.
It paves roads to our goals
And reminds us we deserve it.
People most certainly possess soul
And Poetry preserves it.