muse – Wordsmith: At The Forge

Stumbling Through

by brian francis

Seeking out the source of inspiration
I found myself in a deep dry well.
Nothing there could offer stimulation.
So alone I built myself a living hell.

Hidden in dusty volumes: past consideration.
Doodles lining margins, once passing time.
Scanning ancient notes with contemplation
Finding only aggregate no thoughts to bind.

In frustration I lashed out against creation
Yet again my drunken muse does not respond.
So alone I sit in my silent meditation,
Imagining the banks of Walden Pond.

Then gently, without notice, sleep overtakes me.
The day then fades away and soon is gone.
Dreams, torment, and chase; will not let me be.
A restless soul who fights to carry on.

When morning comes and wakes my sleeping sorrow
Another day to seek and find that, what I need.
A turn of phrase or a thought which I might borrow.
Anything that will help me germinate the seed.

Salted Fields

by brian francis

I have sat before the easel
my eyes closed reaching for inspiration.
Blackness pervaded all of my thoughts,
Creation’s smolder subsided
before I even dirtied a brush.
For months I tried, I studied,
I ached for months I sought an artist.

I still own those paints
they lay with the fallow fields of my creativity-
in a heap in the shed.

I have peered through polished lenses
of photographic devices
that have found art in all places –
the perspective avoided me.
Flat and pedestrian, became my images;
gathered over all these years
and saved in a box
with their curling negatives and fading color.

I have sought passions embrace,
yet, found myself laying
with the drunken illusions of my curiosity.
Shame wrapped itself around me
concealing my stupidity.
Blinded I struggled with dragons
in barren hallucinations
driven by chemical enhancements
to my oh so imperfect self.

I have filled reams
with pages covered with embryos
of creative masturbation.
Rarely ever to find a flower
un-withered by self-criticism’s searing gaze.
Casting aside heaps
to decay and rot forgotten.

Kindness has allowed them
to refer to me as “Poet”.
It is an ill-fitting rag,
holey and stained with failure.
Vanity holds it together
like the repairs of a novice seamstress.
Sorrow leads the way
and I can only hear death’s whisper
calling me away.
Yet, I cling
to this world’s
unfinished torments
and sorrowful songs.

The Bleeding

by brian francis

I sit and dream, and a song is born,
The words cry out for attention.
Of passion’s praise, or loss’s mourn,
Or simply a point of contention.

Compare the eyes to distant light,
movement to grace’s wonder.
whisper the story of a hero’s plight
or the calamity of evil’s plunder.

A voice to echo for a thousand years
it seems is most writer’s goal,
Left unread, of our greatest fears;
These pages of our soul.

Copyright ©2021 brian francis

Writer’s Block

By brian francis

Noises from the darkness engulf
and try to terrorize the soul
With words like daggers flung
across the distant cyber-spaces
of here yet there

When psychotic histrionics confront
the delusions of comprehension and mix
that which is, with that which is only within.

I turn away from the battles of electronic pages
And seek in the notes of yesteryear
Inspiration for the mind.

Frozen embryos of thought lie upon scribbled pages
Incomplete and forever waiting and wanting
For that what it could become.
Aborted edits strewn across the margins
Of unwanted notes and journals.

Doodles lighten a heart of sorrow.
With their dances
among the flowers of artistic creation
like butterflies upon the page.

Echos of the witness of the birth of “idea”
Creation and expression molded into oneness

Faculties distant and drifting through time
Seeking a thought to cling to
Spinning out of control like a kite in a storm
Spiraling down into dreary thoughts
and lost in the refuse of the mind.

Still, nothing comes.

Copyright © 2020 brian francis

Chasing Inspiration

by brian francis

Pages, windows open to the world
I send them out to tease and tickle
A message or an observation
Casting them into the winds to
distant eyes

they dance on the tongues
and spill into minds,
nudging, provoking
inspiring an internal response
annoying, persisting, affecting.

“you’ve made me cry” they write
their tears my happy reward
let them cry great rivers for compassion

Rhymes – sometimes I can’t find them
so I walk on the other side of the street
a different rhythm becomes my strut
a feeling of freedom
freedom from form and confinement
stanzas become strophes
meter becomes flow
as the garments of creation are changed
to the colorful aspects of language
painted in poetic prose.

It feels like magic to wield the pen
to cast the lines in black and white
knowing readers will chant them aloud
to find, their, deeper meaning
in the words cast upon the page.

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