This piece came to me while watching a YouTube video of Bono being interviewed by Charlie Rose, which was recorded in May 2013, but which I watched on Memorial Day weekend in 2015. Something about Bono's description of how songs come to him struck a chord with me, as it were, and the first to lines of this piece materialized in my brain.
The first stanza came suddenly, but it was in the second and third stanza that I realized subject of the piece. Consciousness however is a great deflector of magic, so that in writing poetry, the more you think you know about where you're going, or where you want to go, the harder it becomes to get there. No sooner do the ideas of a poem begin to become clear, then they also begin to evaporate. The poet is left with a turbulent internal struggle to hold onto his inspiration long enough to make a recording, and to do so while remaining honest and while avoiding contrivances.
A poem, after all, is a conversation between a poet and himself; his subconscious beliefs erupting into his conscious awareness. Honesty and Integrity are key. If the poet cannot be honest with himself, he should not expect anyone else to trust his words. Thus, if the poet cannot get it all down before inspiration leaves him, he will be forced to choose between the undesirable option of faking it, or if he is an honest man he must wait until she returns... And the truth is, she may never return.
Lament of a Poet
The first stanza came suddenly, but it was in the second and third stanza that I realized subject of the piece. Consciousness however is a great deflector of magic, so that in writing poetry, the more you think you know about where you're going, or where you want to go, the harder it becomes to get there. No sooner do the ideas of a poem begin to become clear, then they also begin to evaporate. The poet is left with a turbulent internal struggle to hold onto his inspiration long enough to make a recording, and to do so while remaining honest and while avoiding contrivances.
A poem, after all, is a conversation between a poet and himself; his subconscious beliefs erupting into his conscious awareness. Honesty and Integrity are key. If the poet cannot be honest with himself, he should not expect anyone else to trust his words. Thus, if the poet cannot get it all down before inspiration leaves him, he will be forced to choose between the undesirable option of faking it, or if he is an honest man he must wait until she returns... And the truth is, she may never return.
Lament of a Poet
Words in the vapor
Songs in the spray
Echoes of a lover
From an long lost day
This is the dance
The language of life
A passionate mistress
My common law wife
Poetry floating
Like clouds through the sky
When a phrase as a sunbeam
Catches my eye
Quick as a flame
Consuming my soul
There will be no peace
‘Til the poem is whole
But my muse is a flirt
A fickle young lass
My efforts feel fleeting
For soon she must pass
No bonds could hold her
Though I tried my best
Thus this frustrated poet
Shall never find rest
My heart is a bonfire
On a beach where I wait
For my lover’s return
My passion to sate
Salty with seaweed
That seashore musk
Fills up my lungs
As day fades towards dusk
The lapping of waves
Crashing as foam
Oh where is my muse
Far did she roam
I wait beyond sunset
With hope not forlorn
A new day shall come
If I can last ‘til the morn
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