I took the words. I loaded them. Took aim and FIRED! but there was no sound. I cocked back my pen, fixed the jam, took aim again and fired! but again nothing happened.
The words that were once my private passport to another world seemed empty.
I once commanded the verbs, the nouns, the adjectives, the adverbs like my own private army completely loyal to me and willing to be strategically manipulated at any time - day OR night.
Able to strike fear into an enemy's heart and nourish the soul in the same poem and all that was needed in the middle...was a full stop.
What I thought flowed from the soul, through the heart, took a right at the brain and exploded from my right arm onto the paper.
I didn't write to topic or to please an examiner and I didnt care who liked it! I wrote for ME and if someone happened to like it then the more the merrier.
The ideas of rhyme, form, pentuplets, sonnets were nice but rather like being told to pick certain sweets at a pick and mix...the final taste just wouldn't be what I really wanted.
The concepts that wordsmiths had struggled to define in rigid formats for millennia came easily to me.
Love wasn't love.
Love was a demonstration of compassion that held A beauty so unique that only the beholder could perceive it.
Hate wasn't hate.
Hate was a manifestation of the souls response to its own misgivings - to the moments that felt like a lifetime of torment - to everything wrong in the world.
I was one. Heart, body, mind, soul and pen.
My own musical instrument.
My loudspeaker.
My comfort and my real voice.
The "like"s, "blad"s, "bruv"s and "fam"s of everyday life replaced by words of infinite majesty and terms of blinding greatness all wrapped in a sheet of A4.
And yet here I sit, words on the paper, life displayed in the ink and the death of my poetry seeming evermore fictional.
By
Eddie O'Garro-priddie - poet and part of the Words Apart collective!
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