EMPHATIC

Folder:

JOURNAL#18

I want to write forever

why, I want so much as to die

with pen poised purposefully in

my ready right hand

I want my written body of work

to catch such incredible fire

in the minds of many

and perhaps even take some small

form of literary strand

my greatest earthly joy would be

to have school children of the

twenty-fourth century and beyond

reading without any prejudged

measure

my most beseeching muse

I want there to be no call for

rigidity nor any narrow minded excuse

just rather simply put

on my very own behalf

that I so loved to write

and wrote quite extensively about

all of which that I loved

or merely didn't understand

God, dogs, words and men

how all so captivated me

rendering me giddy with the drug

of discovery

how so very often have words

waltzed into my mind uninvited

then mystically enchanted me beyond

even the scope of my own experience

they gave such odd changeling face to

conflicts barely even realized

and somehow mellowed out a great many

disreputable moods that were once so

very restricting

from life with poetry

I was able to volley nearly every

direct hit

the wealth I stumbled upon could

never be bought or sold

yet between the two I was split

few can honestly claim that with

them any specific thing of any real

value can they take

ah but with I

all these scattered, spidery scribbled

ideas of hope filled poetry

to my spiritual breast shall I forever

hold

and carry with me above and beyond

far into the sweet forever after

morrow after never ending morrow

for all beliefs truly great or small

graduate with such degree

I am now umpteen millennium old

and to date

thirteen hundred and sixty eight poems

tall....................

(April 19, 1998)