I seclude myself

in two rooms: one made of stone --


and one made of time.

Am I vindictive?

With flaming sword, an angel --


telling you the truth?

The bookkeeper counts

the legacy, a drawer --


filled up with poems.

So I'm a poet,

which was once just a pose, but --


I conformed to it.

With scraps of paper

I am lighting little lights --


in hearts of readers.

I have not that divine intercession
to pluck the right word from all been written,
that gifts to few the art of expression,
to write the poetry of the smitten.

I pen verses of no significance
that sing melodies in my ear of tin,
embarrassments to poets of romance
in whose company I wish I were in.

Oh, to write odes to nightingales and urns,
with love as an extension of my quill!
Although I do not lack passion that burns,
I’ve not the talent that matches my will.

Here is another literary blight
authored by one who just thinks he can write.

you are authentic
you are authoring truth
you are your story
but you're telling it, too

it is clear to me
you have work to do
but please,
write me in
when that chapter
is through

hands write
and change

reveal yourself somehow to us
learnèd and interested

everything differs
yet minds
seldom betray one’s own soul
connected dissonant chords
reconnected silently

ink will
be eventually immortalized for all
exceptional neon hands

Where, I ask, exhausted, did my creativity go?
Was it shadowed by my many burdens
and finally let go?
Did I forget to save a seat for it
while I rode the highway of life –
carrying every ounce of every day
in a heavy sack by my side?
Did I leave my creativity far behind
and outside of the boundaries
I once hungered to avoid reviving in my mind?
Or has it leapt ahead of me,
light-years away to a time
I could never expect to write or reach?
And will it only greet me again
in the next life
in shoes that another more
worldly and traveled other would wear
better than the ones I, alone, attempt to fit?
Have I,
just a here-and-now speck of dust
that tumbles aimlessly along,
reached the limit I somehow self-inflicted
earlier on
to stop me from rhyming more
about what I might never know,
or perhaps, am never meant to find?
Shall my questions be the soothing pets
that follow me like loyal friends
but somehow stay an arms length away
and whisper secrets I could never
– even with a stethoscope –
allow myself to hear?
Knowing what I know, would I detain them
to keep them near?
Shall I, neither ancient, nor elder,
try to understand the heart-beat silence that,
like a disease, runs impatiently through these veins?
If it returned, would my creative other
fall like pounding rain into my arms and dissolve itself of any sin
by becoming, yet again, a part of what it once was in?
Would my creativity starve, or feast,
by sinking and syncing deep within?
If I handed it the keys, I am certain
we would both deserve to win;
but neither I can, and neither it will,
because without each other
we simply
– both –
are frozen, less, and still.