Poetry can be from the heart,
words of worth spiced with
paprika perception, pretty phrases
spiraling ideas and salad dressed ideals
to make them easier to swallow,
the bland truth easier to digest.

The mood can strike at any time,
sometimes it’s inspiration hitting hard,
your heart pounds and your pen
tries desperately to keep up with your brain.
Spelling is forgotten.
The joined up, grown up handwriting
practiced so carefully as a child is lost to scrawl.

At other times you sit and stare,
pensive, away in the clouds, thinking,
and slowly an idea forms and you write
it down precisely step by step,
then fill it out with analogies, alliteration,
(all tricks learned in English years ago)
or with cleverly thought out description.
It doesn’t cut as deep if made blunt by beauty.

You could be inspired by a teacup
or use the tools of gender, ethnicity,
being an outcast as a child, death or sunlight
and sometimes you’re inspired while running on
the beach in long, white flowing dresses,
and sometimes not. I often find I regurgitate
common themes of truth, clocks, time, death,
women, Wales, sex, love. What more is there?

Sometimes you chose a stanza or design,
rhyming couplets, freestyles, ABBA,
(though I prefer Black Sabbath myself)
often you decide your purpose, style or mood.
but oftener (you make up words)
and write feverishly about…well
you’re not sure what and stumble onto sense.
you re-read and understand
perhaps you mean that, you’re awfully clever,
or perhaps it’s just a lucky accident.

Who knows?
But one thing’s for sure, wherever you go,
whoever you become, whatever you do,
even if you haven’t written in years,
your mind will constantly be forming
pretty phrases to say
what you really mean.