Poem: "How to Paint with Dry Water"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This poem was written outside the regular prompt calls. It has been sponsored by janetmiles.


"How to Paint with Dry Water"
-- a prose poem


Learning to write a prose poem is like learning how to paint with dry water.
Then you hang the painting in the dark and learn how to see by black light.
There are no rules, no guidelines; the painting hangs there without a frame.
The colors run to the edge of the canvas and then wrap around the sides.
There is no rhyme or meter in this piece, only words made of language.
The guardrail of grammar seems flimsy in the face of such creative chaos.
If it were music, it would be jazz; it would be jamming the sound of blue smoke.
If it were dance, it would be bodies bopping against each other at a nightclub.
Prose poetry is all of these and none of these: neti neti, not this, not that.
It can be heard but not described, observed and yet never defined.
It is neither fish nor fowl, prose nor poem, but somehow still both.
It is a heraldic beast galloping across the page, tantalizing, then gone.

* * *

Notes:

Prose poetry is not written in verse, but uses other poetic techniques such as imagery and alliteration.

Neti neti  is Sanskrit for "not this, not that," part of the process of paring away everything that is not the True Self.