Poetry is the collateral damage from dreaming. <br />It’s a horror of thought and images tumbled together, <br />Things you see that are not really there. <br /> <br />There are no pictures in your dreams, <br />Only the half-forgotten memories of sound, <br />And the pieces of time’s framework strewn about. <br />You make the pictures yourself. <br /> <br />When you remember these things that were half-forgotten, <br />Returned again and lost you receive poetry, <br />Wrapped in swaddling blankets and shining anew. <br />No one can realize that it is truly just a mish-mash of rehashing, <br />Or that it has been said time and again. <br /> <br />It is a work, solitary, <br />And if they tried to write the same thing, <br />From the same images that are not really images, <br />They would get something totally different. <br /> <br />In that is the definition of poetry, <br />When dreams shatter and you reform the pieces in a self-portrait, <br />Unique because you are.<br /><br />Violet Llewellyn<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/definition-of-poetry/
