Dear Readers,

Here is the link to the second first edition of The International Imaginarium for Word & Verse (which is the new name for The Virtual Poetorium) with the multi-talented writer, poet, lyricist, playwright and theatrical director James B. Nicola from New York City as the featured poet posted last Tuesday night on our brand new Imaginarium website for you to hopefully peruse and enjoy at your leisure: https://internationalimaginarium.blogspot.com/2022/09/international-imaginarium-for-word.html

I want to thank my fellow bloggers John Ormsby, Diane Puterbaugh, Angela Wilson (AKA poetisatinta), and Tom Ewart (AKA tommywart) for graciously accepting my invitation to participate which I previously posted on this blog. Like last time, I have decided not to repost the entire Imaginarium here on this blog as I have often done with previous editions of the Virtual Poetorium because I feel that it is probably too long a read and thus far too overwhelming for most of my readers (as a result, some really excellent poetry might be skipped, and that would be a real shame). So instead, I will just post this month’s Imaginarium group poem (which is probably one of my favorite segments of both the Poetorium and the Imaginarium). This month, we did a variation of what we did for our Poetorium group poem in September 2019, but instead of asking people to contribute a few lines of “something a true poet would never say”, we asked them to do the opposite and send us one to eight lines of “things only a real poet would say”. All contributions we received were then compiled and included in this month’s Imaginarium Group Poem. I want to thank Robert Eugene Perry, John Ormsby, Howard J Kogan, Karen Durlach, and Angela Wilson (AKA Poetisatinta) as well as other contributors who wish to remain anonymous for participating and making the following poem possible (both John’s and Angela’s contributions can be found published as individual poems on their respective websites Mr. Ormsby at Large and Let’s Write…):

Eight Things Only a Real Poet Would Say…

I.
Love is eternal regardless of what life draws in
Indeed, when we hold it at arm’s length
It will eventually find its home again
A ceaseless feeling that may rip you apart
But the beauty of both love and a poem
Is they are found in the heart.

II.
The heart is a church with broken windows.

III.
A metaphor is a revolving door
That brings you back to where you were before.

IV.
This is just to say
I have eaten all the words
You had strewn across the page
They were delightful
So full of life,
As am I.

V.
You see a marble
I see the moon
You hear a garble
I hear a tune
You hold me closer
Without a sound
I’m life’s composer
Noting it down

VI.
In regards to writing poetry,
The money does not matter…

VII.
The things only a real poet would say are lies
And only real poets spout the gods’ truth.
When the parrot poets, the mocking birds, and the mourning doves
Taught the apes to sing and dance,
Channel thought into word, thrum air into verse,
Then all born would be poets, sharing stories,
Forwards and backwards and inside out,
Truth and lies, lies and truth.

VIII.
When we first began to write,
We were all convinced we would save
The Universe with our verse.
Then later we thought we would be
the ones to rescue poetry from the world.
But now in the final stanza, we, at last, realize
It was, in fact, the poetry that saved us all…

—The International Imaginarium Group Poem for September 27th, 2022