What was that, on your lips, just before you licked them wet?
Floating on their tips and not quite swallowed yet
Quick, do reveal what you mean to conceal, your very first instinct
That one there, within your glare, just before you blinked
It passed I see. As you glanced away, it fleeted from your face
Though it left, I must confess, not without a trace
Now out without stutter; no ifs or buts, don’t mutter
Excuses in mediation. I’m tired, expired
Enough with such trepidation
Again then,
This time please do mean it
Don’t hide inside, leaving me to glean
Oh dear, I’ve have already seen it

Up and over the barbed wire gate
Crept a dreadful Mr. Despair
To meet a horrible Mr. Hate
Who was impatiently waiting there
The dark alley that they had chosen
Was well off the beaten path
But it wasn’t long they heard approaching
A reckless Mr. Wrath
He greeted them with a grunt
A courtesy, for they’d never met
Then up from a steamy sewer
Rose a rueful Mr. Regret
He hardly nodded his heavy head
On his face a grumpy grimace
And so there they festered
Awaiting their last accomplice
Then out from a ***** dumpster
Creeping quite quietly
Fell the gang’s last felon
An awkward Mr. Anxiety
So there they plotted to pillage
In that abandoned alley
That lovely little town
Then called Vulnerable Valley
There they consorted, concocting
To bring the town nothing but gloom
They snickered, spat and sneered
Oh, the impending doom
Suddenly all peered upward
As a light shone through a window above
Their riotous rebellion had roused
A light-hearted Mr. Love
“Top of the mornin’ down there
Dandy weather wouldn’t ye say?”
To which there was no rebuttal
To sewers and shadows
The creeps had crept
To fraternize another day

Had I?
Itches my heart
Because
I will never know

Will I?
Won’t scratch it
For
The answer is no

Can I?
Is still pending
Thus
I do not grow

Set down, collected, keen to compose
I picked pen, swore pretense aside
What’s to be spelled; only she knows
Later though, she says she’ll confide
Puckered a bit and flexed my brow
Crinkled my nose, ready now
With no room for give, she set me here
She and her vast vocation
She whispered a secret and whispered clear
Clear yet cryptic, thus my frustration
What she showed me, I may not have seen
But I peered and penned at it
And what a peery penning it’s been
But she up and vanished
Fleeted too fast
Left only her signature,
Mrs. Present and Past

If I were to write a life-long poem
A line every day, so to put on display
The simple happenings of life
To weave verses together, an enduring tether
Of all life’s joys and strife
Would it have rhythm and beat? Skip and repeat?
Or would it just flow easy and free?
Would it charm or would it harm, this rhythmic yarn
That weaves the fabric of me?
Would this rhyme be a bildungsroman?
Charting progress, growth and learning?
Or would it compel, by whom it was written
To not publish but set it to burning?
Lumps and bumps, and dreary spells
Momentary lameness and drought
Every epic has its lows, as any writer knows
‘Tis what life is all about
Would it conclude with pride and nothing to hide
Confident and self-esteemed?
Would it spell to its reader, whoever at all
The tale of life lived and not dreamed?