writing – Page 2 – A Tuesday Latte

I never met a poet
But its what I want to be
When I look in the mirror
I’m not sure what I see

I never met a rhymer
A person good with words
There’s a whole community
But my voice is never heard

I come from far away
Where words aren’t written down
No such thing as wordsmiths
Tiny little island, tiny little town

I never met a poet
I’ve waited my whole life
To meet someone who’s called that
To see what they are like

I sit quietly in cafes
Writing notebooks full
words no one ever reads
And no one ever will

I’m not sure how you do it
How you call yourself that word
Do you have to write a book or not
Does it matter if you’re heard

I never met a poet
I probably never will
My time to write is limited
And mostly its uphill

I never met a poet
But I hope I do one day
I hope they look like me
And I know just what to say

Today you have been lucky
It was your lucky day
There is something I should have told you
As you turned and walked away

When I shook your hand today
Although you didn’t know it
When I shook your hand today
Today, you met a poet.

And so there it is
A blank piece of paper
Pure and clean and expectant

Waiting

Will this be the piece of paper
where the best seller scrawls her words
Or will this simply be a list of

Groceries

A note to a lover,
a wife’s final words as she walks out the door
‘You should have washed up more often’

Arsehole

Is it to be folded, crumpled
Will it get the soft sleep of an epoch
Breaking down in the rubbish or

Recycling

The harsh teeth of the retreatment plant
Gnawed by fraught machines
Pulped, pulped again, reinvented.

Reworded

Does it still know that it was once a tree
Tall and strong and proud
Before its feckless enslavement to human thought

Scarred

By a pen across its silky surface
Marked forever
With blue and black and red ink

Humans

As the first letter forms on its bright page
Does the writer know
Is she, does she understand

Culpable

For a moment does the echo of a tree falling
Does it make her pen wobble
Does she hold firm and write on

Guilt

Do fingers of guilt
Lick the sides of her ideas
By that, is her ocean of thought

Limited

Free the page! Let it flutter in the wind. Let it fly til it finds where it wants to be. Let it be free of your words and your ideas. Unshackle it from your need to express yourself. Let it float down your manicured street. Free. Let it go.