A Poet's Bad Day

It flows around me

Forcing its restless energy into me

Words seek to climb

This helix vine from swampy mess of mind

To blossom in some chancing rhyme

Instead word-buds shrivel on the stalk

And slouch away in disarray

I’m left to grapple

And wrestle into structured verse

Restless tentacles of words

That slip and slide and disappear

Into the muddy mess of mind

Laughing at my struggle to translate

The ineffable

And from this grey quagmire

Fear in slimy dress does rise

In teasing leer at my predicament

She chokes my confidence

Lisping her sweet temptations

Why bother, your scribbling’s to transcribe

Who cares if they are read?

So I take a breath

And steady my doubting soul

I remind myself I write, because I write

And with that thought I’ll face

My fear and discontent

I’ll put it into rhyme

And write it down.

I’ve wrestled into structured verse

These disappearing buds of words

I’ve managed rhymes

Of seven lines

The ineffable will have to wait

It’s beauty to translate

I’ve done the best I can

Tomorrow is another day

Perhaps my thoughts will rise above

The muddy mess of my mind

And skip along with beat and rhyme

And fear will have released her grip

The beauty of the unspeakable

Transcribed into words