Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Poetic Asides November Challenge Day 9 Two for Tuesday prompt - raring to go, slowing down or fading away








Passionate about Poetry

By far the best days are the ones
When I awake without need
Of alarm clock or being roused
My mind filled brimming with ideas
Words and thoughts needing to blast
Fully forth, to be spilled like blood
Being let upon the page, the ink fair
Pours out as if of its own volition

At times it feels as if the images
Come through me from somewhere
Outside or so far inside me I know
Not of it; I feel I am but the channel
Being used and can barely keep up
With the pen that scratches out
The verses that must be put down
Their insistence is such that it will
Not be ignored nor denied and I
Would not have it otherwise I know

Still, when many hours have passed
Before the muse relaxes and lets loose
Its hold on me; allows my hand at last
To release the grip on pen held over-tight
And my body, unwittingly clenched
In a pose un-naturally tense, to lax
It is as if I am awakening from a trance
That I espy pages and pages written dense


With words in mine own hand but all of it
Is as if new to me and I too weary to read
It just then, slip easily into a deep slumber
Praying just a little not to waken quite
As filled with creative urges in the morn
But instead ready to take in what this day
Has wrought before another takes me
Away with such energy and burns me to ash.

or, on the other hand






Being Told Once Too Often, Slow Down

It’s my motto, words to live by, I guess
Life’s short and uncertain, eat dessert first
Folks laugh and me with them, but really?
It’s the truth – and desserts is, after all
Stressed spelled backwards, there must
Be something profound in that, yes?

Or not, it doesn’t really matter to me
It’s just that speeding to me is the best
Whether it’s in my car, on a lake riding one
Of those sea-do machine things or on snow
When it’s a ski-do; the faster the better
Yesterday I learned if I go to Ferrari in Italy
I can rent one of those babies for fifteen
Minutes and take it on the course myself

In another life I believe I raced horses
And when I get the chance now, even
At my age, I still go riding and still try to get
A horse that has spunk and will gallop, fast
I love motorcycles but respect how dangerous
They can be so try to confine my riding
To courses where I can be reasonably certain
I will be safe; still, I wonder what the fascination
With speed is – why I like to move quickly at all

Oddly, one of the things that alarms my family
What with my propensity for an illness that sneaks
Up upon us all – speed plays a rather prominent
Part in all our lives; given that my tendency
To speak overly fast, or yes, speed more often
Than normal – and believe me, that is a hard one
To determine for the family or me – these things
Are signposts to a deteriorating mental health,
A state of mania making its advances rapidly
Of course rapidly – how else? And being told
To slow down, enrages me at this phase in my illness.

So, while slowing down is often likely the best
Course for me as it would be for most
I find myself thinking I will slow down when I’m dead
Life is too short to go about anything in a slow manner
There is too much to do, too much I love doing
And I will never get to do all the things I wish
If I slow down for even a second, this is how my mind
Starts to race when hypo-mania begins it stealthy
Takeover; although stealthy is perhaps not correct
For hypo-mania becomes mania overnight and there
Is nothing stealth-like about that speed, is there
Even now as I write these words, there about me
A miasma of confusion and run-on sentences
That worries me and makes me think I should stop
This before I find my thoughts racing and worse.



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