Poetry Drafts

I carried a debt deep within,
an unawareness of place and time,
a lingering doubt this place was mine
to rule and ravage as I found it
inappropriate: approximate 
like a half-rhyme sanctimoniously
split over two vaguely poetic lines.

I saw you going further: forcing 
a full rhyme at the cost of – of, of
the sacrificial crucifixion: named
forevermore the plurality of pens,
the chopping of a single glyph:
an enjambed word! 
a single silent s, to start a new line
to confuse and to contain 
a singleminded rule of rhyming. 

I carry a debt, one I never intend
to forget: you words dividing, 
searching for meaning of memories 
and migration: birds, beach or
the hill of Babylon;
I will never become another.

I am no poet; wordsmiths are a different kind  
of beings: alien to my pen of blue ink; of crumbling tapestries  
they weave and conjure blue skies from the terrors deep down 
where their unconcerned clouds no longer linger.

I am no poet; writers write their blue truths: 
blue moons and pink pigs crashing, crackling,
roasting to feed the alien men, and beating heart
of a Lady’s pen.

I am no poet; never saw his Skylark soaring in his sky;
never bought her beach bird’s obsession: food, food,
her Sandpiper’s ceaseless search for food, no pathos felt
for nature’s deep-rooted drive to survive.

I am no poet; I fake, I take His words 
mixed and unmatched with Hers,
to simmer slowly a tepid truth
served crumb-less, cold, meatless, untold – a bowl for fools.

How to measure a life, measure 
The time you have lived 
Instead of the time you have 
Been alive. 

How do you judge that life, judge
The success without comparison
To another’s, unbiased thoughts 
Signing the bottom line. 

How do you measure a life, 
A lifetime of time passing
Without waves shaping any rocks 
Or gravel left to others. 

How do you judge that life
Without scale and sense,
Without any signs of ever having
Been alive.