Kill the critic:
let him drown in the
flow of your words.
Kill the critic:
let him sear in the
molten eruption
from the core of you.
Kill the critic:
let him smother
gasping against the tide
of your creativity,
.grasping at the emptiness
that was your insecurities.
Kill the critic:
be free.
.
.
NB: I do not advocate murder of anything but the inner voice that tells you that you’re inadequate. Your inner critic has no business in your writing head-space. You can’t edit a blank page.
City
streets
are graveyards
of summer leaves.
Their blood red corpses
crushed beneath our feet
ghostly impressions
on concrete:
art in
decay
.
(for Leena, in memory of our Yaletown adventures Sunday morning)
You’re simmering
on a low boil,
bubbles sitting on the
bottom of the pan,
popping to the surface
in occasional bursts
of aggravation.
I don’t know
whether to turn
up the heat,
or turn you off.
She gathers words
Pulls them to her
Guides them along
Embraces them
Squeezes them
Entices them to dance
with her.
They spin together
in a furious
jubilation a
celebration an
ecstasy of gyration
She lets go
and words fly
spraying her soul
to the edges
of the universe.
Little symbols of death
endings
passing of time
gold and scarlet
carcasses
of summer
raked into a pyre
that grows
and grows.
But the voice of death calls
to the child in all
to live with leaping joy
and laughter
mocking loss.
Rolling in the death of summer
welcoming what comes
next.
Avril!
They shouted your name with a joyous fanfare
as the curtain rose on cue
but you were not there,
the stage was bare.
In a sliced second, he stared
and then the curtain dropped and
he fell into a story
as if he hadn’t called you,
We saw the flurry back stage
as you flew into position,
a tap on his shoulder and he
pointed at the stage and shouted again,
Avril!
In place of empty space you raced into song
tracing along the path without a care
to cheering throngs of youthful fans
who’d earned the fare.
.
Sometimes, we shout our expectation
and to our frustration our stage is bare
there under the glare of our desperation.
Turn and tell a story, deflect the unexpected
but when we look back,
it’s simple celebration.
While water washes shore
on a moon misted morning,
summer surrenders
to golden kisses
and scarlet sighs.
.
.
(I am finding my commute above Shuswap Lake to be very inspiring! At some point I will have to stop to take some photos for you. It is positively GLORIOUS! In the meantime, this photo in words will have to do).
The warp of night
The weft of hope
Shuttle flying
Fabric of dreams
I breathe in a poem
inhaling words and images
savouring the rhythm, colour, and aroma
flowing through lungs, heart, veins,
capilliaries and arteries.
I exhale the moment
and the poem,
it goes
free.
Some years,
September exits in a swish of scarlet, and
October dawns dappled in gold.
But this year,
October is opulent in shimmering emerald velvet.
Forests hold back their adornment.
The morning whispers on wisps of fog beyond
“I will wait.”
All around the lake, summer aches for more time,
grips tight to verdant hues,
and as October embraces green
its ochre arms
bide
the firey glory
of autumn.
Shawn L. Bird 