Poetry At Age 23 Poem by Joshua Bantum

For a poem to be perfect,
It takes not just the correct words,
Or placement of them,
But so much,

Too much more,

The location of it’s writer
Must be perfect, and
Appropriate, his body
His mind,
in a state of perfection,
a person cannot be perfect,
and a world cannot be perfect,
but granted with fortune
are those humble at heart,
procuring seconds of perfection
within a moment

His vessel extracting poetry seemingly
From thin air,
Must be perfect,
Pen, mechanical writer,
computer,
The paper it’s printed on must be perfect,
His eyes, fingers,
Nose mouth and ears must
Be synced perfectly,
The Artist’s history up to that
Point must momentarily be evaporated
Expelled from their dependency on the future,
To the present,
Because every moment is perfect,
It must be recorded singularly and
Purely, standing alone in a realm
of All.

Importantly together with
All this,
Is the reader,
Their part as the virgin,
Taking in this sizeable piece
Of perfection, it must fit,
It must stretch enough to feel, to hurt
But not enough to distract
From the joy of sacrifice’s rewards,
Of nerves firing into exhaustion
A show of flares exploding in the vast air
Of your body,
It must crawl into your belly,
Seed you with excitement, mourning
Sadness and tears, of passion
And dread,
Tearing at you
As if ready,
Inspiration being birthed, now effecting the eternity of your life,
From hence, onward, the reproduction of the soul
Is art, and this is love of a different sort
All together.

You have the writer, the positive giving, the reader, the negative receiving
And the piece, the source drawn upon like a pond, keeping life’s vitality in a balance,
Which is perfect.

To me,
this is poetry at age
twenty-three