The Futility of Poetry

I.
A narrative may have its moments,
but it could never possess the concentration of life and being that a poem does.
Try as I might to hold onto grand metaphors that span centuries and peoples,
it seems to me that those pure moments of life are enough.

No, they're not just enough,
they are all.

Each of these moments contains the mathematical sum of all the centuries,
but the whole,
that infinitesimal
    momentary whole
is greater than all of the combined parts.

As the Universe was contained in a single, tiny, scientific being,
so is all of life contained in these pure moments of extremity,
standing,
    nearly falling
off of the edges of the continuum of human experience.

All life is a journey in and out of these moments,
weaving to and fro on the continuum of being and belief.

II.
Do not talk to me of plots and tensions and characters—
If I speak to you at all in these moments,
    the plot is your life,
    the tensions your own,
    the characters your friends and your lovers.

You write your novels with footprints and stains and coffee rings.
The details and the secrets are for you.
Only let me speak to the moments,
justify their necessity,
take your details and throw them into the epic narratives of the stars,
clichéd and timeless.

Let me attempt words that flow between the lines of the stories.
Not morals, though—
But the voice that exists before morality can speak,
the creature that clings to your heart and hides from the view of the angel and devil on your shoulders.
That little creature that experiences,
that feels the breaking and bursting of your heart
before the angel and devil can assign moralities.
Before logic responds,
before you remove your hand from the fire.

But these are only the frantic words of a futile poet.

I'd need a thousand of them to paint you the picture
I so desperately want to show you.
And even then, it wouldn't be the words that are important,
but the spaces between them,
just big enough for you to write and paint your own images.