They cancelled
John from Cincinnati over at HBO. I could explain why I loved it so much. I could tell you the premise and explain what my theories are on the parallels between
John and the Gospels. I could relate the funniest parts and tell you how parts of the show cut so close to me that, for a few minutes on some particular Sunday night, I was laid bare in the dark of my living room. You could have actually looked straight inside.
There are just some things that never come about, never catch on, are never born, don't get picked up. Potential is left to lay too long like balloons too many days after a party. The streamers still look ok, but all the air has just slowly, inescapably escaped. For a few days, you see the balloon and smile. Then you kick it out of the way. One day, it just looks shriveled and pitiful. You take a pair of scissors or a knife tip or your teeth and cut a little hole in it. Mercy killing for an artifact of a celebration that has just lived past its day.
I am a poet. The words I use are so carefully chosen, culled out from the hundreds or thousands it would take to write an essay. I could write for years on the scene of Hiroshima, could look up the pictures and document each sight, each bit with its own chapter. Writers have, writers do. If you need to know the details and hunger to learn every horrible fact, it is good that they do. I could interview the last remaining survivors to hear their own words and translate them into paragraphs.
Sometimes, I write long. But deep in my heart, I am a poet. And poets offer something different. Poets use few words and try to convey the shiver that ran down the spine of the first person to look up at the planes and see them for what they were. A poet puts the grit between your teeth like the grit in the teeth of the only survivor in a neighborhood, under rubble, waiting for rescue and, holding the hand of her dead child, prays it won't come in time. A poet takes you up, up into the air just below the gills of the mushroom cloud, lays her finger alongside of your cheek and pushing with the weight of the world, points your eyes to see what has become of a city. The poem I would write is like this...
Hiroshima
b
o
m
b
desolation
Because I don't preface my poems like I did just now, many times, many, many times someone will look at one of them and think, "myahhhh, I don't get it." The poem lays there with such potential. I wrote about those poems once...
I watch as it gathers a crowd to cheer its antics
or stand alone with it, my hand on its shoulder.
There, there, I say, there, there.
But there are the times, yes there are, when just the right eyes fall on just the words for just the moment and sparks fly. I am a poet for those moments.
As I write this essay, I struggle for meaning and weigh the words for their impact. I edit. I diagram. When I write poetry, there is none of that. The words shoot out of me like sparks from a roaring fire, not caring where they land or whether they set fire or fizzle. I don't write for the times of the conflagration, the bright campfire or the warming of cold fingertips. That is beyond my control. But sometimes, I set a fire.
People have such potential. They come into the rooms of our lives as babies. "Welcome," we say. Check that Apgar. Clean her up. Someone, if only the delivery room nurse is glad to see Baby. If Baby is lucky, she is loved as much as I loved my daughter. Or she is not, and then she is not.
Sometimes, Baby is hit or belittled or ignored. Sometimes her potential goes unnoticed and she spends her days being less than. This is a lot sadder than a cancelled TV show. Ever so much.
When GOD writes poetry, the little people poems are born with such potential. People are created to point out a flower petal or smack us up side the head with a truth to get our attention. Sometimes, the rest of us say, "myahhhh, I don't get it." We overlook the poetry of those around us all the time.
When GOD writes poetry, it is worth a second look. My Father's words may be hard to understand...
...don't be afraid to ask.
