POEMS OF YESTERYEAR

On this layback Sunday morning, I chat and laugh with those I love. I survey the backyard, and my plans for intermingling herbs with sweet vegetables, and with ingenuity. And I rummage through my papers and books of yesteryear.

This morning I found two poems in a previously published book of my poetry. The year was 1976 – at least that was the report on my copyright. The poetry could have been written anywhere from the invention of earth’s stones – to 1976.

Although most of my poetry is now written on a computer – those poems were either handwritten or they were composed via a typewriter. They are both written from my heart as a youthful writer.

Heart as a writer! Hmmmmmm. Is that the heart that batters its way across a landmine- filled acreage of words? Punctured and mutilated, and sometimes exiled and scorned? Is it the heart that finds joy in a simple phrase? Or is placed upon an altar, or emulated, or loved?

Although at the time I primarily was writing journalistic feats about twenty-story buildings being tossed together, and a lost dog, and maybe a blurb about a fifteen-pound cabbage.

I took breathing time on Sundays to write poetry, stories, and other scribblings. “Mood Typer” and “A Writer” were two of my contributions – they explained the emotion and the longing I had and have for words.

MOOD TYPER

From the keyboard of existence, I sketch moods.
Exaggerated and underplayed, I twist events to manufacture poetry.
Jotting words that translate time.
Feisty and aware, counterpart to the zealot.
Downtrodden, lingering and shirking my duty to execute an exacting appraisal.
Argumentative and callous, when looking at the harshness of past events.
Sensitive, weighing carefully, I observe with compassion and love.
Objective and subjective, and seldom realizing the difference.
Trying to evaluate a never-ending series of emotion.
Slicing away at the words and editing out the milder moods, I am.
Penciling in the sideshows – developing a continuation of thought.
Meaning it, as I attempt to create mood portraits.
With quiet desperation – wanting to understand.
Feeling the vibs generated by a network of today.
A compulsive attempt to paint a social commentary – I pound a keyboard.
Going deeper and deeper into that commitment to capture an illusion.
Secret revelations of the interior have clutched me tightly.
Bypassing punctuation and carving away adjectives – I pour words.
Self is being exposed.
Painful, elevating, exhausting, and mostly meaning it.
Mostly attempting to mean it.

COPYRIGHT 1976 Kieran York

A WRITER

An interior flasher of sorts – a writer is.
Trying for the social commentary,
I’m tapped into the Muse.
Writing and tissue-papering a chronicle of today.
Peeling back and letting you witness my tranquility and my rage.
Me.
So why are you discussing punctuation and spelling –
when we could be taking about my meaning?
Insecurities are always a fun topic.
I can tell you what hurts me.
When I feel the pangs of war, I cringe as I jot them.
When I tell of hate’s terrible chain, my heart shrivels.
And I can pull back the flesh and let you peer in to see a happy beat.
The moment I experience an unfolding columbine.
A smile from a wayward stranger, who wants to see my smile.
Who needs to recognize my human hope.
A writer is an emotional stripper of sorts.
Because of financial gains and fame?
I’m told I must first die.
Why then?
A promissory note.
I know you understand.

COPYRIGHT 1976 Kieran York

———————————————–

Please check out my love poetry in the best-selling poetry collection, Sappho’s Corner Poetry Series: Roses Read, Volume 3; and Wet Violets, Volume 2. Edited by Beth Mitchum. These books are available through http://ultravioletlove.com and Amazon.

If you’re interested in romantic fiction, please check out the 2013 Lambda Finalist in the Romance category, Appointment with a Smile by Kieran York. Books are available through www.bluefeatherbooks.com. Or order through Bella Books Distribution for books or e-books. Books and Kindle e-books are also available through Amazon.