Poetry and the art of communicating feelings

Poetry is meant to communicate and transfer feelings, opinions and desires.
So why can't I write poetry?

I've tried, doubt me not, kind reader. Indeed, I have tried to write poetry since I fell in love with literature.

The best poem I ever could write was one summer, in Italy. I was 15 or so and had just begun to explore Italy, its white beaches, suntanned and cheerful inhabitants, and the waves.

So I wrote a long poem about the waves. The main character was called Willy, and he overrode the other waves to such an extent that he accidentally killed them.

Call me pessimistic or negative.... perhaps I overindulged in Schopenhauer as a kid. In the end, it doesn't matter. I wrote that I wrote, and it was poetry. Since then, prose has become my only source of outlet.

Why? Can poetry only come as an overflowering sense of emotions? Was I never born a poet?

This brings to mind one of my favourite novels, Milan Kundera`s "Life is Elsewhere",illustrating the life of the young poet. Disenchanted by his loving mother and intoxicated by the female sex, this poet eschews all forms of love, thinking he has espoused a greater being- called poetry. He begins to think of himself as an artist, an erudite, someone who knows more than his contemporaries.

At least I cannot claim this false flattery for myself. The poem about the waves died a lonely death. In any case, my memories have not died. Perhaps that is all that counts.