Precarious? You seem grounded from here. Phd., job, wife. Are you a closet bohemian? Do you long for opium heavy orgies? Drunken brawling? Are you a English rose who longs for the gutter?

I think I'm beginning to understand what your saying, if no one ever loved or appreciated VanGogh's paintings, would they be art? Good question, and you're right I don't have the answer. So this is a poem, simply because the author wrote it as won. I'm stubborn, but not unreasonable. I thank you for the discussion.

It's not about power. Expression is not poetry. No more then a wall well painted is art.

But even when they "tell it like it is" as you put it, they make it uniquely interesting. They don't just say what happened in some unstylized manner.

I cannot deny it holds no poetry for me. Some people hate any number of "artists" therefore their creations are not art to those that don't like them. I can believe I am the greateast artist in the world but til I have an audience, I'm shit. I can say this is not a poem. This is not a poem.

Yes, but I long for the He's, She's and Me's to be more seperate. Like a triangle. Each coming from his own direction. I think S2 is quite fine. If you can keep them seperate somehow. Bring them together at the end. Maybe write 3 stanzas were you address them and their needs individually. This is more of a pentagram then a triangle.

There's nothing wrong with it. Beans are beans. Some people add garlic, a bit of rosemary, a little olive oil perhaps. They make a poem of it. Otherwise it plain beans. Which would you rather?

They have everything to do with the quality of this poem. I mean love as in love as writers.

Or if not simile some other poetic slight of hand, of which this has none.

I'm not defining. Who do you love? Do they write with simile or not?