Why poetry, still?

My letter response a while back, where a dear friend asked me why poetry sounds deeply saddening to him. This was my theory (although I have more theories now, I still stick to this one most times):

 

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Since the elder days of lyrical production, poetry has taken shape of shoulders carrying the shadows of human declaration.

From a singular first word of verse to the last sound of its adored stanza, it has been used to spawn nights of joyous dreams, dawns of draping silks, and as a hand moves to slide away those curtains woven of melody: a window, leading to giant sights of exposition, hills of galloping horses hauling our pains, our wounds, whatever we deem worthy to exist in that composition, because it too shall stand to compose us.

That is the level of communication all artistic movements tend to bleed out, those small shreds of emotion that plea for capture, and beg ever-so softly to be replicated, to be laid upon those hills of erosion so they too can taste the winds and streams carving away figures of reality. So they too can dock at those immense seas of versed salt, so they too can be cast upon the shame of their fault. Sharing all our moralities and sorrow, fears and loves, they are the Gods our minds are able to create, our fronts illuminated midst the foggy lighthouses of our fate.

Poetry is sound requesting to be heard, all the while praying that it shall never be truly felt. It holds no message but the one it cannot convey, inhales only the air it cannot attain, and rises ethereal, dodging a volley of arrows aimed at the core it humbly attempts to translate.

And I, narrating the strolls of flowers and their petal waltzes, am reduced to a lonesome grain, carried away, endlessly carried away, each verse another wind-strike, meters and meters of paths along a starless sky, from eons where the sun is blindingly beautiful in its rise, to minutes where it’s just an icy sphere casting upon me the lores of demise. Taken away by blowing agonies, abducted in the desperate glistening of their tears.

What was before an effigy of nature’s claims, is now a valse of linen strings placidly caressing my skin, takes form beneath my ground of insecurity, holds my callous hands, kisses my cracked lips, and signals towards horizons of truth in doubtless figure, wrapping around these hands, and soon dissipates.

Versing is of utmost cruelty, its envy at the rawest state;
Envy of those blooming lotus flowerbeds, breaking the hearts of any deemed beautiful before their reveal. Envy for the melodious birds whose lyrics none can encapsulate. Envy for a world presented to us in all its higher forms, and along those horizons of elevation and the figures representing such painstaking fortune, we do not see ourselves, only, at the rarest of times, glimpses of our verses and melodies along with paintings of our pains. Versing sets boulders ablaze and hauls them at the endless scenario, salvaging anything beautiful enough to stand out from the remains, leaving a wake of all we abandoned at the flanks of those once-sylvan lanes.

It hurts… every time. Doing so in any tangible way…
But what would poetry be if it could not destroy the landscapes it attempts to create…

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I’m sorry about the overuse of gerund, it has come to my attention recently that I do use it a bit too much. You can blame Portuguese for that odd habit. 

This is generally the style of my regular prose, even in simple informal communication (such as a letter). I’m not too confident in these, but tell me what you think, I have tons more.

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JOHNNY