Camelot was splattered all over a Dallas roadway soon after I was conceived, and today my country is making white men great again one tweet at a time. In between, I have endured the Ambassador Hotel, Memphis, Chicago, all of 1968, Helter Skelter, Tet, Munich, Watergate, stagflation, yellow ribbons, disco, Mark David Chapman, the gay plague, Ollie North, terrorism (in all sorts of colors and religions), Beta vs. VHS, 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs, DVDs, MP3s, car phones, flip phones, smart phones, Apps, Monica Lewinsky, Osama Bin Laden, worst natural disasters ever (over and over again) and birtherism. The only thing I have learned through all of this is, “no, we really can’t.” Now, you want a statement of poetics? An explanation of my poetry. Really? What do you want me to tell you? That I write sonnets, haikus, villanelles, rondeaus, or any other forms that I can barely pronounce and don’t understand. Maybe, my poetry is projective verse, where I smear everything that comes out of my mind on paper, then take weeks to edit my spontaneity. Perhaps, my poetry is Flarfish gibberish that is funny and entertaining to read, but doesn’t mean a damn thing. No, wait, I am definitely not a Flarfist. That’s too weird. Should I be a conceptual poet and turn someone else’s words into brilliant, or not, works of art? How about bury myself into the language and make profound statements about important issues that no one understands because I alone hold the key to the poem? I’ll tell you what. I’m going to do all of it, or none of it. Why should I be limited? I don’t possess the idealism of an aging and outdated Boomer, and can’t afford the luxury of being a narcissistic and apathetic millennial. I’m now in charge. There isn’t time to worry about a label. I have experienced everything, accomplished nothing and now have the weight of the world on my shoulders. My poetics will be what I need it to be at the moment, and it will be poetry, at least until some younger and smarter generation exchanges it for store bought weed while sipping a $7.00 cup of a flavored espresso/frape/mocha drink at a corner coffee shop owned by another professional who, like me, gave up on his education to do something meaningless for the rest of his life. All I ask is to be left alone while I watch the world burn up laying in my kayak bathed in the glow of coco butter and tequila.
Yours truly,
Ric Walden
POET!!!
Ric Walden Poetry 