POETRY IN THE AGE OF TWITTER

 

As I come to the end of this series on the poets of Twitter, I’d like to take a moment to thank both the wonderful poets mentioned in these posts and all those who didn’t get a mention.  All of the poets in the Twitterverse, from the indifferent to the sublime, share one commonality:  they have all chosen to give of their craft, freely and generously.  Not since ancient Greece, when wandering bards would spin poems and tales accompanied by lyre and lute, has there been so much poetry so freely available to anyone who wishes to partake of it.  Thank you all.

You could, I think, start a pretty good fistfight if you asked all the poets on Twitter to nominate one — and only one — of their number for the title of greatest poet ever.  Well, fine:  bring on the uppercuts.  I’m willing to chance it now, with my own choice for Twitter Poet Laureate.

Amanda Leigh is the embodiment of pure poetry.  Leigh’s talent and artistry stand in a class by themselves.  The sheer power and beauty of her words elevate the whole of Twitter.  Free verse is never more free and metered verse never more hauntingly beautiful than when it is shaped and molded by her expert hands:

sourced jasmine
a well in
spring
brings us
to a fever
closeness
knots our
souls in
jeweled
lighting
a timeless
beginning

*******

Leigh’s mastery of her craft is reminiscent of the classic poets of old.  Like all great poets, she recognizes the close kinship between the natural world and the realm of the soul:

My stars land in circles
spirals of dust
Labyrinth of spirit light
Concentric consciousness
Blows through me

And you
Pulsating undulations of
shooting velocity

A welcome blindness
comes
Centered among the
Phantom pillars

We seduce ourselves
into
each other

*******

Great poems bring hidden passions to light, bridging the distance between poet and reader in the most intimate ways:

Our souls have been tied
Black strips of leather
Steady tantric pleasure
Magical words we speak now
Roll our ripples across the
Aurora rivers
A funnel cloud
Gets high

*******

And more passionate still:

Loving dances floating
Perfume trances
rose petals and prose
a beautiful shade of lyrical
laughter
I love my man seductive
in time with my heart beats

*******

Ms. Leigh is at her best in poems like the following, where the cosmic is made beautifully manifest and deeply personal:

I touched the cotton web of time
The sticky moon bled
called as the sun never felt right
I am not one
I am a constellation
A Galaxy
A universe
A multiverse
I am every dimension
In all realities
I am nothing
Outside of something
Stars made me
I am who you are
Energy

*******

Leigh can do, in a few lines, what most poets can’t manage in ten cantos:

Uncover your eyes
Smile into
The stars . They are your
Mother and father

*******

As fluent as she is in the language of free verse, Ms. Leigh is equally as skilled in the usages of meter and rhyme:

watering the garden with
sighs and silence
touching the sky with
poetic rise
the light is shining
across over our
signs
a beat into our
eyes

*******

Great poets know how to reach the heart and soul of the reader, as Amanda Leigh does in every piece she creates.  Combine that with her incandescent talent and a wonderfully fine sensitivity, and the result is a match made in poetry heaven.

There is one more aspect of Ms. Leigh’s work that places her far above the pack, in my opinion.  She is incredibly prolific.  She produces more great and moving poems in a week than some poets can manage in six months.  With that in mind, I will now step aside for a bit and let Amanda Leigh’s lovely light shine:

The passage of taken
whips and winds
a gust
shakes fairy dust
pollen from milky waves and way flowers
you watch me scream your name
the tomb is written us
inside the building walls
stepping outside the castle
courtyard gates
the graveyard is offering
a feast

*******

Poems written on second sight
vanishing ink
blots
panoramic sing
blue bells on violet
lavender underneath
tiger lilies growl
orchids cast spells
a glorious sun spent
day
sailing inside
our moon cave

*******

Your voice came to me on
Sound waves of goldenrod
Sweet candy smiles
With a squeeze of
Smoke

*******

Our bed is made of flower petals
a canopy of black silk
tranquil bliss
sheer transparency
fills the opaque
rays of light
stripping us
through
the columns
that hold our
place in time

*******

A laced up spider
web
glinting with
water gems
spiral galaxies
sunsets and
sorcery

*******

hills undulate and curve
we walk
never apart
the sea salt brines our time
watering our minds with dew and honey
the density of the woods
is welcoming

*******

Heat trapped in stone
sizzles when the cold
water falls
painting
us in
phases

*******

The bits of light
that glitter
rain through
the trees
splay our
souls
against the
sun
and raise our
hearts to
love

*******

Under Peach colored moonlight
We lie on the sand
Out of the forest
Comes sapphire sound
The garnet ocean
touches our Bodies
Light escapes the stars

*******

How can he not see his own beauty
he is a soul of nature in a universe speaking a humming whisper
his demons run deep
a broken light stays on
touched by romance he wants to dance under the moon and sleep in a tree
his music shows him to me
he’s walking in a boat on the sea

*******

Perhaps just one more, for the road:

The entrance to his light
his dark
deep soul
is found in the woods
where red bark holds white glow
cotton calm
pristine leaves
and roots are railways
to his heart

 

Amanda Leigh is a beacon of light and loveliness in a sometimes drab and tawdry Twitterverse.  It is my dearest hope that she will someday soon make good on her promise to anthologize her poetry, that her fans may keep her in their Kindles and e-readers and partake of her masterpiece at will.  I for one am greedy for her poems!  In a recent posting, Ms. Leigh assured me that she would look into self-publishing her works “Someday…Eventually.”  I believe I speak for all of her fans when I say, “I long for ‘Eventually!'”

Amanda Leigh is so prolific, she can be found on two feeds:  Amanda Leigh@LovelyStarMaker, and ALM@sunstillmoon.  It is only fitting that we should give Ms. Leigh the last, lovely word:

We are
Going to be
Filled with
Each other’s
Poems