Life has taught me to see the shallow heart of contemporary society. Postmodern philosophy, postmodern art, and especially post modern poetry, attempts to destroy higher thought and fails to see, intellectually and emotionally, the deeper reality. Did someone once say, “They found him in the gutter dead?” I think of that sometimes and wonder if the struggle against the postmodern world has led some people to end up there. It is true, it is difficult to find the right words and put them together, let alone find those that touch the soul; it’s as if the words exist in an endless sea of silent waves that wash over the shores of a place beyond the horizon. Does mediocrity and fear of failure keep the postmodern society from finding them? Does it make good men cynics?  It seems the social constructionists intention the death of poetic vision.

But now it is after midnight, the time of shadows passing, and I am immersed in thought. It is how poetry should be, flowing in indefinable sensation, to which end the words melt into oblivion. And what I knew in the moments before is now gone. The sound of a Beethoven piano concerto is almost all that’s left of an inexpressible realization, the melody and memory of a feeling found in a poem that I once knew – words without that feeling are simply words: for without the indescribable sensation of what was set in motion so long ago, colors become pale, breath dissipates to still, and the dead are all that’s left to exist in the world…michael.r.wanamaker@protonmail.com