Poetry in its Infant Stage: A Moment with Bill Debacle
A Simple Declaration of Fact
I am not a poet.
There. The truth is out there for all to see. I am not a poet. I am many things, but a poet I am not, and for the first sixty-five years of my life I have managed to be fairly happy despite this shortcoming…..but…
I am, however, a person who has never met a challenge he didn’t love, so when my good friend Ann, or Annart from HubPages, challenged me to write a poem, I shuddered, shivered, and then accepted her challenge in the spirit with which it was given.
I have, in fact, written one other poem. About a year ago I wrote a little number called “I Cry Real Tears,” but since that day I have felt no compulsion to ever try again. Still, there is that challenge, and you know how I love challenges.
Listen, I know nothing about poetry. I don’t know about counting syllables and rhyming. I know nothing about pentameter or any of that other nonsense. I am a prose writer with a poet’s heart, but I am not a poet.
Still, there is that challenge.
So I’m going to do it. I will give you not one but two poems….right here, right now….and then I will allow the poet in me to slink back to obscurity so I can get on with my writing career.
The first poem is whimsical to say the least and it is also in response to a challenge I received months ago from my dear friend Sha. She challenged me to write a poem about my grocery list, so I call the first selection “A Day at Ralphs Supermarket.”
The second is my feeble and self-serving attempt to draw attention to my soon-to-be-released novel “Resurrecting Tobias.”
I hope you don’t think too unkindly of me because of these efforts.
- H.O.W. Humanity One World: I Cry Real Tears
Thank you for taking the time to read my very first, and quite possibly last, poem. I hope you appreciate the sentiment and message and do not concentrate quite so much on the poetic style.
A Day at Ralphs Supermarket
Itemize the things I covet
Matched against available funds
Frozen pizza, meat lovers supreme,
Cholesterol be damned
Don’t take Bev for goodness sake
She would only ruin the fun
Who needs veggies I think aloud
Meat is what I crave.
I want to apologize to the great poets of the past. In fact, I feel horrible even calling that thing a poem. We’ll just call it a response to a challenge and leave it at that.
Resurrecting Tobias
Are there answers to the questions?
Are there reasons for the pain?
Are we merely players on the stage
With no lighting or direction?
There are days of mass confusion
Encircling rare moments of
Intense clarity, a rarity, here then gone
Leaving us with more questions.
Through it all a feint glimmer shines
Giving us elusive hope
A beacon in the distance glimpsed
Then snatched away as the fog sets in again.
Love will light the way
Are we willing to see the truth?
Love will light the way
Once humility is embraced and ego slain.
So There You Have It
Sha, Ann, your wishes have been answered. I will now tuck my poetic voice back in the closet where it belongs. Thank you for the challenge and I hope I haven’t caused any of you to have an upset stomach.
Remember this old adage next time: Be careful what you wish for.
2014 William D. Holland (aka billybuc)
“Helping writers to spread their wings and fly.”
