A New Poem!

It's been almost a year and a half since I wrote a poem of any kind. Yesterday, I had this knot in my stomach and was feeling very 'stopped up' emotionally. As if something was going to explode, and yet I didn't know what or why. As it got worse, I suddenly had this powerful urge to write. It was like an act of desperation to purge what I was feeling. And it helped.

As I mentioned in a prior post, most poems I write are not rhymed. However, when I do write a rhymed poem, it's often in an attempt to be direct about something. The structure of the rhyme and rhythm force me to think and then images take form around what I feel and...out it comes. I wrote this in ten or twenty minutes and only did minor edits to it. It's a rough little ditty, but I'm pleased to have written something!

Baedeker Blues

I am an anagram
whose letters spell no words
My feet mired in earth
while I'm dreaming of birds

My compass spins
between what I feel and know
I doubt my direction
but my map says to go

Tears in my eyes
I take all the blame
Wondering if every road
would have ended the same

Looking forward does not help
for I'm coasting on prior dreams
whose realized realities
carry me off in chaotic streams

It's time to stop it all
running to nothing, regretting could-have-beens
Brave an uncharted path
until I am happy again

- Peter Cholewinski