You penned an unsealed note to yourself,
Its Writer, Verse and Address were as one -
A Wholly Poetic Trilogy.
You were brave:
Left your paper-lips wide open and
Let the letters leak;
Watched them run
Into the grooves of the creased spine
On the back of the pushed envelope you posted -
Wounded origami angel wings
Sprouting from the shoulders of your scripted self.
You feel you were delivered to your pretty little house face-down,
Desperate to fly but tied by glue to some side-table surface,
An ornamental cardboard carrier-cherub,
Smiling in the furnace,
But unable to breathe...
I read through the words you tattooed on to your feathers
Again and again,
From their bold beginnings
To their ruffled dead-ends...
...ends which say:
..."Stuck"...
Behind a parchment-brick wall...
That's why I've picked up my pen -
Cracked it open,
Moulded its cascading ink into a ladder,
So we can climb over
And look at what's on the other side
Of that stoney-faced page -
See, its edges came unstuck:
While you nested, and rested your eyes
Your vertebral quill was effortlessly flapping,
Whipping up a written wind with ease,
Like second nature,
A cathartic breeze
Mutating the rock you carved on
Back into a leaf once more,
And turning it over...
Letting it hover and settle anew.
Now it's a hive of technicolour graffiti,
Not a dead-end
But boundlessly alive -
It shines and thrives
With designs
Voluntarily plucked
From the lucky minds you've touched.
They bustle decoratively across its columns,
And among them is this reply:
You are now, always have been,
And always will be:
Not just the Writer, the Verse, and the Address...
...But all the happiness you inspire in others too...
Because of who you are in writing,
Because of who you are in life,
Because of you.
See, that Wholly Poetic Trilogy,
It needs its Fourth Wheel to become Holy,
To roll and rumble towards
And crash through
The gates of that pretty little cage.
So, mould your beautiful ink into a key -
It plays a minimalist melody,
A ringing note of ignition.
Push it,
Turn it...
And let's drive.
My girlfriend wrote a poem last night. It was wonderful, raw, evocative and inspirational. I promised I'd write her a reply in poem form. This is my attempt.
