While it’s popular to think of poetry as word soup bereft of grammar, that’s a new concept. Slam poetry is just rap: accessible to those without talent and painful to anyone with it.
It’s like calling art random scribbles because of how popular “abstract” art has become. (Would it really be so popular if not for its usefulness as a money laundering tool?)
Poetry — like all writing — can push boundaries, but we must still hold it to a standard so we can judge it good or bad.
After all, you can’t tell how skilled someone is at something unless you have a standard for what’s good or bad.
Relaxing standards is a symptom of tolerating lesser-quality people. We get rid of standards when we feel they’re unattainable. We hate things that make us feel bad, and laziness is more popular than hard work
Why do you think so many people give up on poetry that rhymes? It’s hard work. It takes skill and effort. It makes you feel bad when you fail.
But without failure, success means nothing.
Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t be afraid to piss someone off.
Keep going.
Apocalypse
(Excerpt)
There’ll never be a better time
To eat your just deserts
Soon you’ll beg the mountainsides
To cover you in dirt
O, flee, you horrid beasts become
The parodies of men!
I curse you and despise you
For where you all have been
You’ve broken ev’ry sacred trust
And trespassed ev’ry law
You thought no one was looking
You thought nobody saw
I wish you the Inferno
The dark, unending Hell
Of souls in immolation
Where on your own you fell
Sara the Editor 