I dream in iambic
I mumble in verse
for Will was my teacher
and Em was my nurse.
My quill dips in fountains
of eloquent ink
and beautiful etchings
for Poe was my shrink.
I farmed with my Tennyson
planting the seed,
I studied my Cummings
(old e.e.), indeed…
“anyone lived” is a
poetry force…
and as for my Kipling,
I’ve kipled, of course.
I’ve mingled and mangled
with many a bard,
I will be a poet
it can’t be that hard.
On a mildly blue day in forever
in a slumber world born of a choice,
past the mountains and molehills of never,
where the river meets ocean, a voice…
is reciting an often told story
of love, the definitive prize,
of a boy in his whimsical glory,
of a girl with her soul in her eyes.
It’s a study in secretive glances,
It’s a ballad in hesitant rhyme
of do over hearts and romances
unbound by the shackles of time.
Then deep in the night or the morning
my supposedly untroubled soul
in league with my heart, sounds a warning
that the lease on my heart can’t control.
Am I mending a heart that was broken
am I telling a tale out of school
am I shepherd to wishes unspoken
or a dreamer exposed as a fool?
~ Dean Neighbors ~
