cat poem bitches

"I feel like I am being watched. Every step I take, they are judging my choices, they are breathing at my neck, they are scrutinizing my every move. The paranoia escalates and I don't understand why I feel like I am being watched until I remember that at any given time there are at least five cats in my household."
 - cat poem






I love this poem. Basically "Cat Poem" is these two girls who are performing a poem about their intense love for cats, but they do it with that same intensity and anger that is so characteristic of spoken word. It is hilarious and just the best thing I have ever heard.

Most of all I think i like how lighthearted it is. So much of spoken word and slam poetry is about all these really intense and heavy topics that are fueled by emotion filled performance, and I love that-- I do, but I love this as well. I like how they are perhaps inadvertently making the statement that you don't need to have deep rooted issues and conflicts within you to be able to write and perform spoken word, you can just really like cats, which, Jesus Christ, these girls really like cats.

it also got me thinking about what is a poem really? well actually this poem I saw on hello poetry got me thinking about what is poetry really and then I typed what makes a poem a poem into you tube and this came up and I just had to watch it again because it is just that good.
Any way, the poem I saw on hello poetry is just this untitled one line piece that goes, "I can't have a good day today because my best friend has to ruin it for me". At first I read this and I wasn't sure is this really qualified as a poem but I've been thinking on it some more and now I'm not so sure.

Just for fun, I think I am going to try analyze it.

"I can't have a good day today because my best friend has to ruin it for me."

lets see. Maybe this is saying 'is this person actually my best friend' because i think not. A real best friend doesn't blow out your candles to make their light shine brighter. I don't think the author of the poem should be letting their shitty 'best friend' ruin their day. I think if I was in this situation i would just remove myself from their company and surround myself with people who don't try and drag me down into their despair.

I don't think it's the length that makes me think 'is this really a poem?' but the non poetic nature of it? if I had read this and it wasn't on hello poetry or some other poetry website, I would just think this was a diary entry or something.
Maybe that is what makes it a poem though, when you think about it poems kind of are peoples diaries, this is just a more blunt, direct route I suppose. Maybe i should start using hello poetry as my diary and see what responses I get. literally one of the comment on the poem was 'thank you for sharing' but that's what all poems do, they share a bit of your inner thought with the outside world.

I used to think what makes a poem a poem is the intent with which it written. a think a poem should always be aiming to say something and I suppose this poem is.

maybe putting restrictions on what a poem is is a bad idea, because then people are put off trying to write poetry, but I think there should be some rules? otherwise people will be saying that the fish and chips menu is poetry. God I have no idea, im just trying to make sense of the messes in my head. Ugh i hate that I'm kind of starting to understand the whole 'my thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.' thing. Blah, such cheese.