Sometimes I wake at rosy-fingered dawn
to pen my lines when dew drops grace the lawn.
By dusk, when blood-red moon begins to bleed,
my sorrow-laden lines I dare not read.
Some days the poems pour out of my soul,
released from county jail - out on parole.
Lay low like lines of laughing liberty,
hysterical to be at last set free!
My verse will sometimes freeze – refuse to flow.
Take root inside me, then mutate and grow.
Until I’m large with child of pregnant prose;
these still-born poems, damned, do decompose.
On dreamless days my rhymes are red and raw.
Since they do grieve for one I knew before.
Before fate fed to me (a yearning youth)
cruel heartbreak’s tried and tested tragic truth.
Sometimes when I’m composing, all Hell-bent,
I miss the words my Muse has Heaven-sent.
I substitute my own to fill the gap;
that’s why sometimes I serve such sorry sap!
In haste I’ll steal fruit early from the vine
before the verse can turn to vintage wine.
By plucking prematurely rhymes unripe
my scrawl, from sour grapes, will give you gripe!
In spring I come to life at 3.00 am
and conjure up a priceless little gem.
A poem, so divine, the angels weep.
Then dawn, it breaks, and I can’t get to sleep!
When I must walk the dog, but need to write
and daren’t delay, for words will soon take flight.
I tie him up to rail by roadside tree,
to pine away, while I pen poetry.
Sometimes my words are shy; they hide from me!
Like faery folk in sylvan, shady lee.
Each one, a springtime lamb, that I have nursed,
naïve as child, in evil still unversed.
I wield my pen, some say, like wizard’s wand,
beguiling you with beauty from beyond.
In making magic I don’t mean to mock;
I simply want to stir you up, not shock!
My pen, on Sunday’s quiet as a quill
and sonnets so serene do simply spill
upon my parchment or papyrus page:
wise words, as well as wonderful, like sage.
Of course, when lines are lean and I feel old
my heart feels froze as arctic wind, ice cold!
I close my eyes and lisp, like child, a prayer;
If no one else, at least my soul is there!
Sometimes I write on water’s weary waves,
with tears, for those with seaweed shadowed graves,
whose feet, upon the land, will no more tread;
I eulogize these hopeless ocean’s dead.
In youth, my verse was callous and uncouth,
just jaded juvenilia of youth,
which I transcribed from heart, back then, unbroke
before I’d stained, with tears, my poet’s cloak.
I wish that I could start it all again;
write for a living by the paying pen
creating novels fit for silver screen.
By Midas Touch, grow rich, but not grow mean!
Meanwhile, in garret’s gloom the death-knell rings;
it’s tolling just for me, while siren sings.
On snorting horses DEATH and HELL ride out;
then I awake from dream, so shocked, I shout!
Sometimes I sit dejected in my room,
a grieving ghost in garret’s gabled gloom.
My ink won’t flow, to splash my empty sheet,
but this will pass, and this is not defeat!
One day I’ll write, make Heaven touch the Earth
with angel’s breath, to bless with new-born birth
pure poems, rich, with rare, romantic rhyme,
inspired by muse’s sweetness, so sublime!