The Path of the Poet

Three short poems about poets

Path of the Poet, Janaka Stagnaro

As this is Poetry Month (by whomever decides these things), I wanted to share the following three short poems I wrote a few years ago, two of them about what I would call the illusory side of the poet, from my self-observations. Maybe it is just about me, the stoic romantic. Fortunately, my spiritual practice has kept me—who can so easily fall in love—in check, and I have an enlightened wife I can confess such plaintive feelings to, dispersing romantic thought forms. In my old drinking days, those thought forms would not be checked, and I would be an emotional, panting wreck.

Ultimately, this longing, which is what romantic love is all about, is really about the soul longing for mystical union with the Divine. Ramakrishna advised, “If you must have desire and greed, then you should desire love of God and be greedy to attain Him.”

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought, and the thought has found words.

—Robert Frost

The Path of the Poet

there lies a path i travel
no buildings phallically erect
to pierce the sky

this landscape is flaccid
in its completion

i walk not alone
for i stroll under a poet’s sun

where the rocks have faces
and shadows make their own rules

*******************

Beware the Poet’s Love

beware
when a poet says,
I love you

for you are nowhere to be seen

you are hidden behind a painting
of the poet’s mind

*******************

(An American Haiku)

poets
don’t trust them
they possess moons for eyes

Write till your ink be dry, and with your tears
Moist it again, and frame some feeling line
That may discover such integrity.

Shakespeare

Thank you for reading. Have you fallen for those sweet words of a poet, or do you, as a poet, ever seduce yourself?