I Got a D, and a Demanding Muse
Assignment,
pencil tapping,
groaning,
my mind
napping,
smirking
at the pristine page
void of rhyme or meter.
Write
she orders,
and expects poetry
to flow from lead.
Demanded words
from a constipated head.
Chose,
a subject
you care about
and let the words
flow. Free verse.
But costly,
if your shy and
and desperate to
finish your homework.
I spy,
an idea
laying there,
in scarred bindings
a girl and a horse.
I want a horse.
A way to escape,
to fly into the wind,
and jump obstacles
like this one.
I held my breath,
awed by the words
appearing, on my paper.
My hand channeling words
fed it from some deep place
I never knew existed
until now. A place
that had held
a sense of pride
hostage.
Waiting for me
to smile, and set it free.
I turned in
a my first poem.
And waited. Expectant.
Retrieving the paper
with it's red marks
I found it D Graded
by a disbelieving teacher.
Positive it could not be written
by me, although she did not
know who the true author
might be.
I cried. Threw the poem away.
But, in the night I woke enraged
and grabbed notebook and pen
and I wrote, into daylight, all
I had hidden in the dark.
All I had found in the light.
And I found I was born of ink,
and crinkling paper.
Words flowed freely,
when they did not
dictionaries whispered
secret words
I never knew before,
and pictures were
stories I needed
to tell in verse or
in rhyme and meter.
Tall, iron gates
creaked as they opened
oiled by angry tears,
releasing a lifetime of
talent. An emotional outlet.
A Muse that will not be denied
or Die until I do.
She is demanding,
daring, and determined
to never be silent.
graded, or blank stark white.
She is wild loops, and scratches
erasures, print, cursive, type.
Writer's block has come,
those long years in life when
busyness turned her down
to whispers in my mind.
Poems that drifted into air
incomplete, words lost to time.
and my lax inattention.
But she was always there when
I gave her time, moments
we connected, and created
words to leave behind us
our expressions of thought,
experiences of life,
our literary legacy.
How I wrote my first poem, and discovered poetry was something I could do, and once discovered had to do. © 2012 Tamera Dobbins