Poetry: Fountain of Youth

I write poetry because I need poems to vitalize everyday life, and not because I am a professional and/or "working" poet. I don't write every day. I should, but I don't. I'm a lover, alas. I'm not married to the Muse.

Perhaps, it's fear of commitment. Sometimes I go weeks w/o composing. But every single day, I envision poetry mentally & take out my five senses. Sometimes I experience a mental poem as vividly as I experience a film. A scene. Dialogue strings. A fight and/or flight. An image. A metaphor growing like a tree, with petals hue-ing & falling.

And daily, I play with words. We go running, words and I. Sometimes we take off, and fly too close to the sun. Call me spacey. Astronauts do it with more thrust.

Seriously, I don't desire publication, at this time. I have no desire to publish the Great America [fill in -------] at any point in my life. I've published exactly one poem. Which is one more than the number of stories or essays I have published. Unless you count the series of short stories I wrote for a student-organized tabloid at St. Augustine's Elementary School. That is, until we got busted for publishing w/o school authorization, and, audacious!, charging students for it, and best of all, making money :) Samizdat for the middle school set.

I want people to hear and be influenced by my poetry, and that objective won't be achieved by publishing in journals that few poets read, let alone the general public. My project is poetry performance, and getting grants to work on larger projects & craft, so that one day I will publish something meaningful. Something that spurs folks to do, to be, to vitalize their lives.

For now, I write lyrics, modern-day ballads, and psalms. Some are borderline erotic (ok, maybe I've crossed the border). Some are metaphysical, or otherwise philosophical. But all are passionate, that is embodied. Gut-sy. Incarnate or Carnal, depending on your point of view, or preferred organ of sensation. Whatever. I write what I write. What you do with my words. Well, that's up to you, isn't it?

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Category: Psalm

Lord,

Show me mercy. I'm just
Human. Breathe me.

Break my blood-brain
Barriers. Commit me.

With your extravagant passion,
Fire me.