ON POETRY

By

Kevin O'Cuinn

I.
I don’t get poetry,
never did.
Or if I did
it was until Hopkins
then everything went pear-shaped

II.
Before poetry,
Nursery rhymes.
I was okay with nursery rhymes
I saw them as precursors of poems
Trail blazers!

Just goes to show

III.
This is not a poem

If it were a poem it would be incomprehensible

My money says you are still with me

IV.
I once read a poem by WB Yeats
There was this line:
‘pyrne in a gyre’
I think that was the line that turned me off poetry definitively.

V.
WB Yeats had a brother called Jack
Jack was a painter
You can see his work at The National Gallery of Ireland
Entrance is free
Jack's pictures kick butt

Painting is tangible
Poetry is, I think it’s…

probably the synthesis
of unemployment and butt-scratching

VI.
At school I learned what a rhyming couplet was.
When I first heard the expression
I thought it was something sexy.
It’s lots of things
but sexy
it ain’t

VII.
If I was a poet I would know how to finish this.

But I’m not.

But if I was
I'd just say some guy woke me
right before the best part.