Take only what you can carry,
Only what you need.
Just enough to feed and water
You and a faithful steed.

Forget the path well trodden,
That will not help you on your way.
Instead forge your own trail
For others to follow one day.

Never shy from an opportunity
Throw yourself through every door.
For this life is an adventure,
Now go,
Explore!

The rain may fall hard
But do not close your window.
Open it instead.

The answers we find
Shall never be as grand
As the answers we seek.

The words don't come as easy anymore,
As if the very act of utterance
Has now become a chore.
Words that once slithered
From my mind and from my tongue,
Seem wrapped in insignificance.
Like the vacuous distance
Twixt our planet and our Sun.

Oh yes,
There are enough faint marks
That we can trace constellations
In the quiet of the dark.
Finding meaning that was never there,
Seduced by mediocrity
With just a pinch of natural flair.

I feel the muse has died,
The last ember of a humble
Fire,
Now fuel deprived.
So I shall trawl through the
Musings of others.
To find a spark and kindle
My lovers.
The spoken and written word,
Perhaps entwined
With a musical accord.

Perchance then? If my ego may be silent
Perhaps I could take pen again
Assault the salient!
Then if determinism agrees
I may once more feel the words
Flow through me like the breeze.
I will ink my conscience once more.
Till my mind is left adrift,
Treading water to
Distant shores.

Little boy lost,
Among the valleys
And the fens.
Took shelter under cloak,
The elements to defend.

"Mother!"
"Father!"
He yelled into the air.
"Brother"
"Friends"
But there was nobody there.

The boy marched on into the torrent of the gale,
As tears entwined with rain
Drops.
Whispering forgotten tales.

Alone.

Kind of,

But the wind has a way of bringing the world to life.
As little boy lost shivers in the pale moonlight,
He comes upon a brook from the corner of his sight.
Just enough to make him stop.

Inquire,

"Where just is this stream among the mire?"

No matter where he looked, whether,
Left
                                          or       ­         
                                                                ­                       Right.
The stream remained unbidden,
Forever out of sight...






Forever is never as long as it seems,
When we are but young with youthful dreams.
The little boy no longer as lost as we.
Finds a guide in the sight of that once brook,
Now Stream
Meandering into that river to the sea,
Flowing tidal
Through waves of possibility.

Just because you break
Lines in odd and obscure
Places.
Does not mean you are writing a poem.
No rhythm,
No rhyme,
No structure
Nor Metaphor.
Just a stream of consciousness
With an occasional literary flourish.
Now I am not one to adhere too close to the rules
But shouldn't this all be in one paragraph?

Once down the old Caledonian road,
There walked a broken man
Who walked all on his own.
Entombed in tattered cloak
Against Decembers cold,
The man fell to pavement
Fell to pavement all alone.

None would descend from
High misguided thrones,
Have a heart and pass the starving
Man a bone.
And not a soul would stop and save him.
Once down the old Caledonian road.