Injure Eternity

Sometimes it’s just a matter of time
The time to take the time
To embrace the time
Having time enough that time is well spent

It’s a currency you can never have too much of
Or, if you think you have, then remember that
On your last day, with your last breath
A thin smile creases your ripped lips
As you think
How lucky I was, how blessed
And how great a fool

To think I could have had too much
Of a good thing
The greatest thing
And a far wiser man than me once said
When he was wandering the woods
And playing in trees
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity

On that one thing
And many more I’m sure
He couldn’t have been more right
Now and then we all have the time to write
To right the wrongs of words we never said
To say out loud the mantra that is crashing through our
Heads

But when few enough hear it and fewer still
Care, it becomes harder and tougher and well,
Leads to despair

So forgive me when these jaded green eyes
Impassive, pass right through you
I’ve seen far more than I care to see of apathy
And far too little of life to have a valid opinion
Not every poem can be a battle hymn
Not every verse can shake you
And this line is no elegy
Just promise that you’ll find time for me
And I’ll take the time to keep scribbling along

Spurting verses that sound better in one’s head
That on the pages that nobody has read
If rhyme doesn’t sound wrong then look for
No reason more
Than surface meaning not surfeit layers
Nor anything buried deeper
Than the skin
I’m just here to scratch itches not open up wounds

I’ve taken alliteration as far as I can
And wordplay innovations no longer hold you in ovation
I’ve shown all that I can give
And given far less than I should
Though it’s more than most care to hear

Inspiration

Inspiration is not a river, nor a stream
There is no constant trickle of ideas
It is neither an ebb nor a flow
Inspiration is a small spark

From a single match, a single discarded cigar
Taking hold of a forest, searing the sequoia
And then
Gone

A spark, a small spark
Yet the mind needs nourishment
Much like anything else
It wilts, it flops, flaccid into itself
An implosion

Caused by mass media news and junk television
Feed it Dickens, Tolkien, Keats, Yeats
Chekhov, Ovid, Blake, yes even Blake
I’ll never love your little lamb, Sir, but you stirred me up
And feeling like shit is at least feeling something
I tip my hat towards Gothenburg

Not true writers; musicians, the professors clamour
As they strive to root out some great mystery in every
Single, metric, foot, as though, Shakespeare buried
Some great secret in Coriolanus
And you could be the one to break his code
Now, come on Sir, perhaps he just wanted to use a full
Fucking
Stop
Right there.

Oh and then Marlowe, what a man can achieve in some short
Thirty years
Is enough to confound as much as admire
If a few glasses break over my thick skull some day soon
I hope some whining fool is writing odes to me
In four hundred years time

Though I’d settle for four hundred days
Now, Poe, America’s finest, many might argue
Yet you chilled my bones, as you buried her alive
In a crypt by the tarn

And moving back, Dante, hell you’ve got some nerve
Some verve, and a ponderous verse
Call upon Virgil and imply his approval
When he is but dust and his Rome a memory

If i chose a guide through this, by my side
I know of one man I would take
Though he wanders through the dark now himself
He’ll never walk alone as he stands guard atop the walls
The abbey, in red, will always live with me
So, Sir Jacques, I bid you your rest

And so what if elves became otters and dwarves were just mice
Great Gilgamesh proved that a cliche, a story told twice
Can ignite millions
Move them to love or incite to hate

So whether you live long with whiskey in hand
Then tube in your throat, defiant to the end
Or let it wash atop you and be overwhelmed
With stones in your pockets, barefeet in the riverbed

Inspiration drives us, us artists, us fools
Tonight I lay Dostoyevsky aside
I feel far too much like Raskolnikov
Yet half as smart