In Florida last month, I always carried my camera, and often stopped along the bike paths to take pictures. Above, the blue water of a calm lagoon reflects the beginning of the evening sky. I myself, am so often in a hurry, and it is still hard to slow down and take a look at things. The same thing goes when we look at people, noticing things we did not notice before, good or bad.

I am always amazed at poetry, how poets write poems in a weird non-human voice, how the poems "chatter ideas," and how they want in some desperation to be published, as if being published proves something. Of course being published proves something, but the intent seems to be published now, today, currently, poems that offer nothing of interest to living life, but packed full of "half-thoughts," tid-bits of incomplete angst like stepping barefoot on a wide slice of onion on a cold tile floor. Icky.

Here are the rules for modern poetry:

Don't say anything.

Avoid a story.

Stay clear of wisdom.

Do not be clear.

Politics is acceptable.

Political correctness is demanded.

Contort the language.

Prose is poetry.

Personal angst is art.

Trauma, negativity, gloom required.

Incomplete, obtuse vague inferences are 'arty.'

The 'subject' is sacrosanct. Any subject is good, even if meaningless.

Religious poetry is always perfect.

Poems in tongue, in code, mysterious, popular.

Private poetry vs public poetry -- unknown concept.

Far-fetched references mean sophistication, however phony.

Anger, resentment, bitterness, yelling, are theraputic, and dull.

Never "offer" anything in a poem. If you do, just who do you think you are, some phylosopher? Everyone is on the same "level," everyone is equal, and never criticize anyone or their work, because whatever any writer produces is "art."

There are many other rules for modern poetry, yet there are one or two who rise above these rules.

The picture above, ugly to some, beautiful to some.