The first thinkers were poets
Naming Mother Earth
Beginning symbolic thinking
Of nature, death and birth

Though themes are often repeated
Love, Beauty and God
Poetry in the guise of Religion
A prophet or a fraud

The poet resurrects the Primitive
Through allegory and similes
Disarming the unknown like explorers
Sublime Prophets and Visionaries

They must lay bare those treasured images
That must be expressed
Unraveling and revealing the sounds
At each soul’s behest

Encompassing the entire Cosmos
So lyrical the beat
The poet’s excitement flows outward
Laid at the Reader’s feet

So original, individual
She won’t examine or explain
Letting go the festering feelings
Disturbances in her brain

He exposes his dark, wounded psyche
Just to release and express
Such capacity to see and compare
Hyperbole at its best

I love, I hate, I suffer
A special dance in rhythm and rhyme
The poet as a buffer
Lessening the pain and sting of time

Laden with symbol and feelings
She gives you sweet relief
From something urgent, revealing
Confusion to belief

Through a cinematic kind of seeing
The poet purges to transform
By leaping through Alice’s looking glass
She never was one to conform

Quite intolerant of convention
Just like The Mad Hatter
His passions immune to all logic
In syncopated patter

Jamming up the poet’s mind
Struggling for expression
Seeking order out of chaos
An infantile regression

Cleaving to his imaginary world
The poet breaks out into words
Creating sound paintings to be unfurled
So his own agony is blurred

She succumbs to storms of passion
With instinctive techniques
Rhymes and rhythm still in fashion
Out of hand flows mystique

The poet mines from his unconscious
The Reader is not blind
For every single line and symbol
Means something to the mind

Causing an inner liberation
Enlightenment or flight
It is a matter of life and death
When darkness turns to light.

The poetic license I seek
Seems to be something unique
No numbers are on it at all
No address or phone number to call

There is no photo of me
Smiling so pleasantly
Nor an "issued" notation
Nor "date of expiration"

No signature is needed
(A departure from the norm)
In fact, my name's nowhere on it
Or even the date I was born!

My advice is not to apply for one
In fact, I strongly insist
Save yourself stress and bother
No such "license" exists

Poetic license you see
Is invisible as air
Yet your skill can make someone smile
Or passionately care

Your words can paint sunsets
Or spout political views
Your poetry can be a fantasy
Or as real as Page One news

Set your pen to paper
Hit those computer keys
Create your own masterpiece
And let your mind roam free

You don't need a license
For your imagination to soar
Just wait for that creative spark
And let that mighty pen "roar"

i will ban
          syntax
          grammar

i will banish
          sentences
          phrases
          clauses

i will evict
          capitalization

i will exile
          all punctuation

i will relegate all of these to the
          circular file of written expression

it is time
at long last
for words to
squirm and falter
but ultimately prevail
in their singular
              splendid
              glory

From the outset, the marriage had
been a troubling one...a springtime
honeymoon in London with frigid
winds and dark April skies only
added to the gloom.

Their rocky union consisted of
alcohol-fueled marital warfare
...arguments endlessly erupting,
the 'silent treatment' dividing
them, bitter trial separations...
but somehow something always pulled
them back together until that one awful
morning when he found her lifeless body
next to him in bed, the victim of a stroke.

Weeks later he made a shocking discovery
...her hidden journals shoved inside a
trunk in a dark corner of their cluttered
attic - diaries filled with deception,
a litany of love affairs, heartless
couplings, page after page of secret
passions featuring a  cast of paramours
catering to her every intimate whim.

And then he pondered his own romantic
intrigues slipping in and out of his
own life all those years they shared.
But he was certain she had no idea what
he'd been up to - she'd been entirely
clueless. She never mentioned them in her
private journals. She'd never accused him
of anything like that. She never knew
he'd ever been unfaithful. It was
simply not possible...
or was it?

is here
shivering in the wings
of pop culture

There's no death in it
no sadness
no Dickensian heartache

There's no old man
searching for God's approval
no young man
hungry for the
jazz of life

I'm only ready now for sleep anyway
sleep that beckons
on some hazy horizon
My eyes shutting out light
My breathing labored
My fingers too weary
to hold a pen

I hear my muse urging me
to surrender to the
lure of slumber

She's telling me
this is not my last poem
and sings me to sleep
on this soulless April night

I hope that I shall never see
An awful dreaded irksome flea,

A flea that feasts on helpless pets
And makes them scratch and moan and fret,

A flea that frolics on a lawn
Plotting mischief from dusk till dawn,

A cruel wingless menacing foe
Whose only joy is spreading woe.

I wish that one day I would see
A fleeting fleeing of the flea;

Trillions of them blissful at play
In a galaxy far far away.

Dear Poet:

Your poetry
throbs
amuses
delights
irritates
stimulates
sometimes incites

Mystifies
startles
unnerves
and excites

Perfectly lofty
exquisitely right
dynamic
thrilling
burning bright
brilliant
heartwarming
whimsy in flight

Provocative
magical
forever true
magnificent
moving
engaging too

So now I'll close my letter
with a plea:

Keep writing.
Take care.

Sincerely,

Me