Salt And Ink

Poet

A crippled poet, that's who I am

A poet that started his undulating journey

With the raw zest of a newbie

But slowly got slapped and injured by the hands of the clock.

Draft after draft decorates my book

The inner critic inside me preventing the fickle letters

From slipping through my grip and before the audience

Their naked bodies laying.

I sit in the dark, phone in my hand

Blinded by the dazzling light

Scorched by the burning dark of the hour

Hovering amid a burning night.

And words and metaphors seem to escape me-

They hang over my mind, just beyond reach

Tantalising me, flashing me smiles

Making me pull my hair.

I was corrupted as a poet early on

When I started writing to please the whims and fancies

Of the online world.

The real reason for my being who I was

Doing what I was doing,

Or not doing,

Writing what I was writing,

Reddening my eyes in the slothlike hours-

Faded into dusty oblivion.

And I became a wretched slave of the slate

Writing, exhausting my ink

So as to pamper the whimsical wishes

Of the world wherein I was misplaced.

I am not a poet. I was.

Before I was baptised "pathetic-excuse-for-one".

Longer.

Truer.

For poets spill the endless nectar of words

From the chalice of their minds released

Onto the yearning palms of the beggar

Until it's time for their breaths to cease.

And poets do not sway like a feeble twig

But stand unshakable as the willow

And with their verses moisten the clouds

And coax the sunshine yellow

To beat down in all its might upon

Their shining window sills

Whereupon perch the fortunate birds-

Black eyes and sharpened bills.

And now I'm turning a brand new leaf

Nah, I'm back where I started

A selfish poet who wrote for himself

And jealously his poems guarded.

And I'm blank, but blank forever not

For I'll soon find inspiration

Till then, I pen to stem the mayhem

That surrounds my tangled emotions.

I write to vent my feelings out

I write to talk to me

I write to paint a picture of

The grey visuals I see.

I write to shout, to have it out

I write to set me free

I selfish poet's who I was-

And that's who I will be.