printable version PDF version

Starkness
by jas Friday, Dec 30 2016, 10:01am
international / poetry / post

the starkness of an empty
page -- a writer’s horror --
is easily dealt with

words that wind
through the Himalayas like an old colonial train
flow easily for a poet anxiously waiting for a medium
upon which to encode whatever seeks
expression, though the origin and character is usually
unknown until encoded

an empty page is no threat to a poet
poetry is life expressed
and All creation Lives

pouncing like a burning tiger
onto a defenseless passive page
poses no challenge
it’s simply another successful hunt,
where is this mythical writer’s block?

the muse is an active agent
never ceasing her undulating,
serpentine allure
never failing to adorn the starkest medium
with various shades of meaning

why rush to encode,
there is no tax collector
pounding on my door?
not that i would leave something undone
once undertaken

hell would become paradise before
i attend to the mundane before i complete
a verse

i once traced my life on the sands of a beach
and watched as a reaching wave
wiped the sand clean leaving me to scrawl
another spontaneous piece which was barely
completed before another wave
created a clean medium again

i whispered to the wind
which carried the message around the globe
but it’s far more appealing to read the myriad
messages carried on the wind -- messages
so ancient they precede human creation
yet are readable today if one lends
them a certain poise, gesture and attitude --
all is revealed all ways

do not talk to me of an empty page
except as a metaphor,
a maiden perhaps, seeking fulfilment
or a blizzard transforming everything to white
begging to be utilised by one who is able to
write on all mediums with any inscriber,
tangible and intangible

i have written on lithesome bodies
with my cock and drawn on the walls
of secret crevices with my tongue,
do not talk to me of starkness

life is saturated with experience
and in each a poem resides