Poetry To Find Words Between Spaces Poem by Ananta Madhavan

Art is a desperate distortion
Of the between-spaces I seek to dwell in.
Poets may chance on their location.

To define is to desecrate.
Not 'stupendous, cute or awesome',
Nor 'foul and awful';
The etiquette of words will stone me cold.

To crave the hurt of variant memory
Out of the stuff of actual events
And fashion an extravagance: that is too romantic.

The word was a mistake, because
It sought to shape the feeling.
Assign no labels to what we think we feel.

Words are blobs, of course. Cliche helps,
Sometimes it is better to have hackneyed lingo
Than pioneer a new idiom, with its
Hazard of obscurity or excessive intimacy.

I saw a Chinese painting, so sharp in outline,
I saw it avoided outline altogether.

Don't degenerate into a whimper.
The line that cuts: this, and not-this.
Don't label it or try name-calling.
The poet is his autobiography.