journal of a writing man
Work in Progress
It's alright now
Somewhere in the fissured void of what may still be
something like a central sulcus, I exist. I have been
there a long time, or so it seems, wondering why
I need to choose between Pooh and Eeyore when I've
ached to be Piglet all the while. All the while.
I wanna hold your hand. I wanna hold your hand.
I want you to write the poems, nice, easy ones,
with a rhyme at the end of every other line
not like jam, always a day away, but reliable, safe,
like reading some one else's dreams on a watery day
when upturned brollies become coracled boats oh heaven save us.
I wanna hold your hand. I wanna hold your hand.
There's a whole other me in there, needing gentle treatment,
believing that a statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with
my own opinion is an absurdity. And that poems should
have lines, and lines have feet, and each line spread
neatly, with exactly eleven words even if there are only ten.
I don't wanna hold your hand no more. You've become a carmelite.
And the poems lose their rhyme, can't find their lines, and
eleven words become ten or twelve and I don't care. Anymore.
But I like to read your dreams every day. It's warm,
it's safe. We are of the clouds, ecstatic, dancing slow
in every pen and ink acre of our forgotten woods.
I wanna hold your hand. It's alright now, you can hum for me.
John Bailey
Lincolnshire, June 2004
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