Next Shakespeare

I've been writing fairly consistently in the month of July, and I'm expecting to type some pieces up over the next week or so. In the meantime, looking back through the old manuscript, the following was page 4 of the book in 2005 that I never published...

Next Shakespeare

To write, or not to write, that is the question:

Whether ‘tis nobler, thy voice to silence

Knowing full well the breadth of fortune stifled,

Or sputter words upon the waiting, white sheet below,

And in so doing, to burn naked on the page;

To be praised or reviled, and either way to smile,

To withstand the heartache of a thousand critical knocks

Invited to the doorstep of the soul sharer,

While shrouded cynics eager to perform battery

Meanly disguise jealousy with snobbish bromides;

The quest for praise will not sustain the erstwhile scrivener,

And yet his heart beats, and still his parched lips thirst.

Selfless existence promotes the perpetration of a fraud,

But to tap the coursing veins of creativity, bleeding black ink onto white pulp

Represents the whisper of a scream, gaining echo into print

Where screaming is hushed by satisfaction;

This fruit of life is knowledge, savior of mankind,

Aware of self screaming for attention from self,

For there can truly be no question among the pantheon of poets,

The pleasure of the process displaces accolades to elevator background,

The name of action must be retained in un-ebbing reflection

And the Elysian Field of words becomes the goal

Where only we lucky few may flourish and persist;

To write is to breathe, and to breathe is to write, this is your mission:

Flourish and Persist, Flourish and Persist – You Next Shakespeare, You!