fact or fiction
Is it fact or merely fiction? Fact or Fiction explores the myths and beliefs we hold about what makes a good poem and the poetry rules that were made to be broken.
Caterpillar Song
I once saw a caterpillar. A caterpillar with 64 black strips between its ivy pillows 0f satin. It heaved them through the world, over concrete and dust. I did not talk its language, nor have I seen the world it sees. I didn't have too. I felt and shared the caterpillar's exhaustion, harnessed to its 64 stripes, that held him back from flying. There was anger in his slithering and despair without a face to it. Once with a grimace, once with a smile it tumbled over the cracks of the fractured grey, up and down, over tremendous heights. I knelt next to it, sharing the raindrops that have started to soften the summer-road. In our longing for more, we shared it - I felt it, I saw the caterpillar in its unarmored form. Held my 5 fingers to let it touch them, grip onto them, so we find him a leave or other breathing green. At first, seeing the giant dome of doom, it started to swirl around itself. Panic became its unmerciful master, pulling the strings in a cruel manner. It twisted and turned on its back and over again. Again and again. Kind words it did not hear, so I withdrew, in bad faith and worse conscious. Sad it made me to be rejected by the blind beauty that housed in those 64 stripes. First it was a bleak sadness but all of sudden, out of a black well, the serpent of spite slid up and set my breast ablaze. Anger took a hold of me and with aimless rage and to my surprise I spat on the ground right next to the caterpillar. Turning my head I set afoot on the alley back home in between the orderly rows of blossoming cherry trees and enfolding men and women. It was spring - in some hearts more than others. Mad-eyed I searched for meeting eyes to draw their lids down to my level. It was out of my control. With some it worked, and others only shone more radiant.
By Matthias Jarolim3 years ago in Poets
