Stephan & Irina ( they never met )

[saw]

I was waiting outside The Myerhoff,
Grappelli ducked out the beat-up blue metal door
that led into the alley, stepped up
into an old Dodge van with a bumper sticker
that read I Dig Jazz with a small red heart
and a fan cried out from the small gathering,
"Stephan, what was that ?
His kind eyes smiled, " You mean jazz ?
and he chuckled before disappearing
into the truck, and I thought about poetry

I thought about analyzing jazz, analyzing poetry....
it should never be done too stridently, but
with lambskin gloves to smooth over the notes
slide silky cool along the verses, a critique
should not be a cruel mechanical bird swooping down
to devour a self imposed carcass on your table,
shouldn't be like dissecting a frog in science class
I mean poetry really matters...a whole lot

to the person that wrote it, take Irina Ratushinskaya
sentenced to three and half years in a Russian prison
given a pencil once a month with a piece of paper
to write a letter to her family, all other writing
was strictly forbidden, yet...Irina still managed
to write 200 poems during her incarceration
she engraved them into a bar of soap with a burnt match

once the poems were committed to memory
she washed her hands of them

[leafsailors ghost]

I first read this several days ago but was called away before I could comment. I see the poets that I have come to know and respect in this poem, poetry comes up out of a relationship with life that is exploring the inner world ,that is when it is the deeper poetry, this poetry does not ask judgment or pass judgment , it is not a competition ,it is sometimes just a whisper in the night,but that is why I return to the page and write and why I return to this page to say I hear you.

[saw]

thanx leaf...nice to hear your thoughts

[mnaz]

goddamned twentieth century.

let's make it better this time, okay guys?