HOW DO YOU WRITE YOUR POEMS?

 

This is a question I often ask myself because I just wonder how you do it! You may agree with me that the worst is to be confused with either reason or rhyme because many times it just does not add up.

Well I used to wonder if poetry was all about rhymes or crazy ciphers which just confuse the mind. I remember reading something someone recommended and I imagined how awesome it might have been if I could have understood it!

What if I could stray from the rules of quatrains and sonnets and write something completely different? I do not know about you but I have seen my poetry mature from the start of my teenage days…obviously because I had a lot to hide... (YOU?)

After someone suggested a poetry hub, I thought about it for a few days before I could find what to share. I did find something worth sharing. It is an extract from some work I did in April of 2008.

 

Where do I begin? With quick discerning of a large dog with a narrow head? With ghostly ink-drawn hints brightly colored and dipped in ashes?

 

My Mind is a Quiet House

 

Am I to stay? Snow falls, dust clods— drawling speech escapes through the windows draped with red velvet, shadows creep on my walls alive with ivy, and then the sound—

The record spins an old song, feelings waken from time immemorial; rapid fickleness—

Will it ever end? The rumbling voices, the clenched fists, the furor, the funk, the indignation…the nightmare…

I have seen the unslaked sepulchral women puffing with unsated desire, the huffy burly men obsessed with knight errands,

My conscious brightens with yellow flowers of sassafras trees, the driveway fills with gentle flakes falling in a shower of white sparks.

I have seen the screaming girls, the doping boys sniffing and dropping dead, the spreading fires from burning muffins,—the nightmare, will it ever end?

The touch of dawn caresses the roof of the house, the shivering wind breathes a sweet gentle chill, snow white dazzles on frozen rooftops

The silent hisses of timely breaths stirs up life across the spread morning, the chilly trails of exhaled air, of faint rustling breeze-blown thoughts—

The frozen crystal waters down stream meanders with a stiff-lipped expression, they stare vague and lifelessly, on diversion-seekers, studying, probing,—

I have watched silently, the shadows moving stealthily, the violent wind that cannot be stopped, the lofty stiff-lipped expressions studying, probing,—

And I have seen the piercing gaze melded against the beveled siding of the quiet house.

 

Quiet House

Ride on my wakening thoughts across the unknown! Unknown beginnings, unknown endings, Swarm up to remembrance from the shadows, from the dark corners of the quiet house.

Remember the days we walked for miles to sit in some lonesome shade, away from the stables and stalls, and each day found us yearning, waiting, — the hours seemed like everlasting punishment…will you now forget this?

Through sleet and snow storms, trapped in endless white, in the immensity of thick endless blackness, we held hands, touched our hearts and sang along the jingle-bells. And then waking up in the brightness of morning, riding on the wings of dawn, will .

Now I wonder when I am to leave, away from the quiet house soaring above the frowning skies, rising above the eagle’s flight, and walk into the bright summer days… away from the ebbing stench of stalls and stables…

The words mount up like cramming clouds, muttering, murmuring, waiting stately like unfallen showers. This is my escape; this is the beginning of me. I have left the quiet house dazzling like snow-white, evanescing for the last time into unknown endings.

 

 

 

I have this thing that when you write, you need to let your mind go free, − free to laugh or cry, free to love and hate…and free to dream...and of course open to all these ideas your friends offer!

Here beneath this tree

My mind is free to dream

And my thoughts drain free

Into an open endless stream