by Jamison Jacobs | | Human Condition
Mushroom smoke rose up
From the distance
A miracle
Like some wizard cast
A spell
And then the wave
Do I hide?
Do I get behind something?
Surely I am too far?
The smoke ripples through
The town shifting to rubble
I am hypnotized
Frozen
Soon the wave is coming
The trees bending
The branches breaking
And then it’s upon
Me
My hands feel it first
And then like
Water it flows
Over me burning my
Skin
My flesh
And soon I
Am rubble
"Poetry is as strong now as it was hundreds of years ago. Kendrick Lamar is doing the same things that John Donne did. One of these we love, the other we get traumatic experiences from High School Lit. We might hesitate to call Lamar’s work “poetry” because it brings to mind old dead white men and incomprehensible Middle English, but the mechanics of poetry are all there.
Rhyme? Yep. Meter? Uh huh. Stanzas? All there. Heck, I would make the argument that sophistication is not even a prerequisite to poetry. “Twinkle Twinkle”? Poetry. “F*ck the Police”? Poetry."
Kevin Chen