World Poetry Day

To mark World Poetry Day 2013, here's a wee poem about not being able to write poetry.

Frustration

© Marion Grace Woolley

Scribbling like a teen

Fervent and frustrated

Pen slipping through my sweaty palm

First efforts all cremated

I bite my lip and mop my brow

I’ve lost my own campaign

There’s just no way of putting it

I frown and start again

My rhymes are cheap and childish

My haikus half as high

My sonnets non-existent

Limericks make me cry

All this verse and reason

Hides the naked truth

I fit words into order

Like pulling out a tooth

I try too hard, I squish them in

Make sure each one has an end-ing

Couplets, pairs, and courting verbs

Nouns, full stops, and drunken slurs

Each dot dot dot, each dash dash dash

Each exclamation, quote and hash

Each ampersand and glottal stop

Each semi-colon, there or not

My thoughts run dry, my tongue is tied

I hide the things I feel inside

Behind a wall of Gothic Script

Arial Wide and Arabic (Traditional)

I bash the keyboard left and right

Change pace at every stanza

Scream my rage into the screen

Slave to (awkward) pentameter

My gifts have all abandoned me

My talents all took flight

Once my fingers drew the sun

Now they beckon night.

Every time I try to pen

The thing I need to say

It withers on the papyrus

Ink muddies up like clay

Inside I feel those wistful winds

That blew through Byron’s mane

Shelley’s tender sentiment

Blake flowing through my brain

A poet I shall never be

But, please, I beg you, pity me

For talents, of them, I have few

To tell the things I wish you knew

Until such time my odes take flight

I’ll burn the oil both day and night

I’ll sweat it out

I’ll scream, I’ll shout

I’ll write until I’m written out.