Brain Wave Poem

I have a hard time reading poems,
even though I find it easy to write them.
What is the point of reading
about how a flower looks?
Its colors
its shapes
how the light hits its contours
at just the right time of day
in a golden and green landscape
with rolling hills stretching your vision out
for miles and miles.

Does it matter that the sky
is a vast gradient of blue?
The deepest blue at the top
and the faintest blue
sewn along the horizon.
The sky has been misted carelessly
with a squirt bottle full of white clouds.

And what if there is another person there
in that poem I might be reading?
A pretty girl with a breathtaking smile
tilted at just the right angle
looking back at the viewfinder.
She has curly golden hair.
The light
the sunlight
it casts shadow and tone
on her hair and her face and her figure
and her clothes rippling in the breeze
at, oh, let's say, three o'clock.
What if it is warm enough for her to reveal
the beautiful fleshy contours of her skin,
wrapped in an tan elastic bathing suit,
nearly seamless and camouflaged?

What would I get out of reading a poem such as this?
Nothing happens in the poem and it simply makes for a better picture.

A man in a corduroy sports jacket
with a photograph of his sweetheart
enclosed in his wallet; sleeved in his back pocket,
holds up a print of a painting.
The painting is by Andrew Wyeth.
He says it is like reading a Frank O'Hara poem.
He then holds up a photograph of a sardine
Laid out fleshy and oil soaked on a white counter.
He asks how they are similar.
He asks how they are different.

The only people using iambs these days
usually own very expensive acoustic guitars.
I say this in all jealousy of there acoustic guitars.
Meter is about music,
and music, in my opinion,
is easier to accomplish
when there is a guitar in hand.
This is a different class
with the same man
in a corduroy sports jacket.

Honestly though, would the poet know
the name of the flower they are describing?
Is it a Chrysanthemum?
Is it one of the one thousand varieties of Salvia,
such as sage or that purple one we see
sprouting naturally nearly everywhere?
Maybe it is a bulb variety,
such as a tulip or a daffodil.
Would the poem include its scientific name?
It's Latin name?

And what about the girl?
The girl in those vision stretching landscapes.
The poem doesn't know,
neither does the painting
or the photograph I am referring to.
The reader,
be it you or I or anyone else,
must decide this for themselves.
This poem makes us formulate that connection.
It is a chance brain synapse among trillions,
and sometimes I find it hard to read.
But sometimes I do not.

Poetry is an art of self
when you give it no rules.
Yet somehow
somewhere
it manages to find guidelines, sometimes.

Otherwise
it rightfully sinks.

Aaron C. Molden