Monday, June 4, 2007

Poem # 2: Traveling the Poem

...the word adventure continues...

Traveling the Poem

A poem is more traveled than written,
more discovered than created,
purposefully chugging its author out of obscuring darkness
towards ill-defined but brightening end-of-tunnel light,
a runaway locomotive lumbering along a wrong-of-way
as often as a right-of-way,
with minimal track providing direction,
belching smoky ideas and cindery words,
its oft-clanging bells and shrill whistles
signaling for revision, rethinking, rewriting,
while propelling the author onward on a claketty clanketty expedition
through memories and experiences and feelings.

Journey your poem, allow it to speed you
along river valleys of fears and across trestles of dreams,
over mountain tops of exhilaration and beneath cities of heartbreak,
into and between lives of desperation or determination,
decision or delay, delight or defeat.

Filter all feelings through boxcar-laden biases,
encouraging all life experiences to color your perspective
and infuse your style with rainbow variety
while discovering its unique voice,
until your poem plops you exhausted but content
beside its final exclamation point!

copyright 2001 by Chuck Morlock

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