I Got a D, and a Demanding Muse

Assignment,

pencil tapping,

groaning,

my mind

napping,

smirking

at the pristine page

void of rhyme or meter.

Write

she orders,

and expects poetry

to flow from lead.

Demanded words

from a constipated head.

Chose,

a subject

you care about

and let the words

flow. Free verse.

But costly,

if your shy and

and desperate to

finish your homework.

I spy,

an idea

laying there,

in scarred bindings

a girl and a horse.

I want a horse.

A way to escape,

to fly into the wind,

and jump obstacles

like this one.

I held my breath,

awed by the words

appearing, on my paper.

My hand channeling words

fed it from some deep place

I never knew existed

until now. A place

that had held

a sense of pride

hostage.

Waiting for me

to smile, and set it free.

I turned in

a my first poem.

And waited. Expectant.

Retrieving the paper

with it's red marks

I found it D Graded

by a disbelieving teacher.

Positive it could not be written

by me, although she did not

know who the true author

might be.

I cried.  Threw the poem away.

But, in the night I woke enraged

and grabbed notebook and pen

and I wrote, into daylight, all

I had hidden in the dark.

All I had found in the light.

And I found I was born of ink,

and crinkling paper.

Words flowed freely,

when they did not

dictionaries whispered

secret words

I never knew before,

and pictures were

stories I needed

to tell in verse or

in rhyme and meter.

Tall, iron gates

creaked as they opened

oiled by angry tears,

releasing a lifetime of

talent.  An emotional outlet.

A Muse that will not be denied

or Die until I do.

She is demanding,

daring, and determined 

to never be silent.

graded, or blank stark white. 

She is wild loops, and scratches

erasures, print, cursive, type. 

Writer's block has come,

those long years in life when 

busyness turned her down

to whispers in my mind.

Poems that drifted into air

incomplete, words lost to time.

and my lax inattention.

But she was always there when 

I gave her time, moments

we connected, and created

words to leave behind us

our expressions of thought,

experiences of life,

our literary legacy.  

How I wrote my first poem, and discovered poetry was something I could do, and once discovered had to do. © 2012 Tamera Dobbins