Literary Exercise # 9--Poetic Diction

I've been on an essay kick for quite a long time now (about a year and a half), but one thing I haven't written for a while is poetry. I find it hard, uncomfortable, like a pair of new shoes, and I haven't figured out how to break them in without blisters. For some reason, my essays just flow. But as soon as the fowl changes, as soon as the seasons shift, as soon as I place myself in my predetermined box, I lose it. What do I really want with poetry? I want to look around the lines, over them and next to them and spiraling between two lines in three-dimensional movements. I want to feel free just like I do with my essays...but really appreciate the unique art that it alone proffers. Thus, poetic diction? Besides being a title copy/righted by Owen Barfield, I think it will also have to be the approach I take. Some of the lines in my essays are already poetic, and if I could keep that free attitude while taking on a more compressed form, that would be awesome (IMO). Although, I think I'll have to revise it. A lot. This is one area that I have neglected. If you saw me muscled by my literary strength, it would be quite comical--strongs arms and legs but a beer belly whose intake could not be confused for any other beverage.

The Trade-Off at Greeley Square:

I fold papers in four directions
directly pointing out the dimensions of this park
and you rise with a start
as if the homeless chairs hold stories to bring out your competition;
where the bark is less than clean and
cheap green laminate peels away to reveal afternoon jaunts
where joints and not jobs (but nut jobs) are the keynote address

You're freckled face tells me one of two things
one, that you are tired, two, that you are leaning down
the spirit of inspiration, so that he speaks, only,
when the mininum of words has the maximum effect.
the rest is intuition.

It's dangerous to fit your thoughts
Between slots of iron-shod bars
When felons take up residence
nightly, with keys that scrape the thin, veneer off luxury cars
and break the skin of lesser-willed pedestrians,
Just outside the public borders of Greeley Square, the fare far from anything you and I would like, but the closest thing to a fair trade

But, maybe, if, and, or when you decide
to care and continue in care
we can laugh this off as one of those buyer-impaired decisions (let the buyer beware)
and chalk it up to careless incisions, the surgeon on hand, trembling ('cause a good scare is all it takes for malpractice, and if your lot was Job and not Abraham, it'd be more than you could bear)
as our smoke remissions and fissions the foggy air
ash settles bare, a cold night passes, age on the rusting square