The Power Of Poetry (and Ignorance) Patrick Roche "21"

  This poem has been making the rounds on many of the blogs I follow and on social media so there is a good chance that you already saw it. If you are like me and usually don't watch videos that people post, I commend it to you. It is well written, well performed and will remind you that poetry has a power that years of bad English teaching can sometimes make you forget.

  I was lucky enough to have a few really good English teachers that kept me loving poetry even when encountering some of the bad ones that took all the joy out of the subject. Worse than that, were the teachers that acted like poetry is a riddle and once you "solved it" you are done with it. (What was that poem about? Wrong, it is about this. Now we can move on to the next one.)

Now for the ignorance part. I know, it is my fault, I should never look at the comments of a youtube video. The comments section of Youtube will make you burn your "human race" card. In the comments section for this video, you get such delightful things as….

"How is this a poem. He is just speaking plain. No intelligent play of words. He is like an emo teenager getting back at his parents."
"There are people dieing in africa who have no food no clean drinking water and no parents. who gives a shit about this scronny lil bitch. you all have it easy and you take it for granted. "
"hat's not poetry, that's just a guy who is overly emotional when he shouldn't because he is a male. True poetry isn't complaining about your damn insignificant life."

What happens to my brain when reading Youtube comments…

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? 

Or fester like a sore-- And then run? 

Maybe it just aches like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

-With apologies to Langston Hughes-