Confessions of a dilettante poet

I am a dilettant. I am not thorough. I don’t haver a plan. I lack depth. I just stumble on.

Some days ago I was reading some Haiku poems. They caught me in a moment of sadness and defeat. And they touched my soul.

Haiku is a Japanese poem tradition that has a very clear structure and form. Original Haiku poems consist of three phrases in three lines with a number of 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the second and 5 in the third. The message of a Haiku poem is concise and to the point.

My mind is sometimes a weird guy. And it collects influences from outside in a very unique way and then decides how to process them and how to spit them out in the form of poems. Exactly that happened with the Haiku inspired poems. My mind read them, processed them and all of a sudden I found 4 poems on my iPad that looked slightly like Haiku poems. But they aren’t. Because that guy didn’t even know about the requirements of structure and form. And the mind just did its own thing. Three of them ended up in the “New Poems” section of the website. “Poems of a venomous man.”

So I warn you. I am a dilettante. And my mind is weird…..

the answer

and that is all
that is
that counts
that makes us move
and smile
and walk on
day by day
that is all
that we need
and all we call it
is one name

Writing Poems

I have been writing poems for a long time. Writing has ever been a way of expressing myself and it is probably the most natural way for me to find expression even closer to me than photography is. Saying that at the same time I have to concede that for many years I could not write poems. It was blocked, it wasn't possible, I could not write. Apparently this has changed now and  writing poems has again become a way of expressing my thoughts and feelings. And it is fun. It gives me joy.

Nothing can be rated higher than letting this stream of thoughts flow. A poem is not work. It writes itself. It is as if the poem leads my hand to the keys and makes them write what it wants to be written. It just comes and flows and there it is. I am sometimes surprised myself bout the result.

To give you an idea of how this "technique" works I am adding a link to some words of Charles Bukowski (just click on the bold letters). He is bloody right!

Take a look at the poems here on my website. I will successively add more of them to the poems page.