Words on a Page

By Kaitlyn Grissom

I’m getting back to the things I know are mine

Too long have I waited

The things I’ve created

The songs as sweet as wine

Climbing my spine

Like a sweet rose-vine

Trying to find that elusive mind

That reclusive brain

That exclusively controls, extols another sweet refrain.

Another long song for another long day

Wrong

Way

There’s nothing wrong with being lost, you say

But at what cost to pay?

You say, lost

But there is happiness here

When the long white frost starts to clear

And the long night fades, leaving shades of blue

Of a shifting hue I never knew

In the morning

There is hope

Born mourning on the slopes

Of the very last hill

Of the Lonely Mountain standing fast and still

Grave as an iron will

That’s where my heart is, still

Still art in the turning globe

Burning among the dull probes and pricks,

Quick slick fiction laid thick on us

Too glamorous, over-amorous

To be real, they hammer us

With a slough

Of comfortable things you already knew.

And at the other end

Philosophy, our ever-somber friend

Monotony, that wanders, ponders

Pacing ‘cross an empty floor

Doors that lead to other doors

The endless maze,

The friendless craze

Winds and circle ‘round the very core

Screams to the beams of light that fight

Their way through the lies

They say to the skies,

What’s it all for?

Work and money and crime

A nickel, a dime

A life for a little spare time

Whittle away the blessed time

It takes to do these necessary things

Spare time for what?

Oh, how the seven heavens sing!

My life, my soul

All roll me toward the self-same goal:

The Written Rhyme

Fir better or worse,

The lifelong curse

The longing for another verse.

Another roaring upset

Of the spirit, condensed into a rhyming couplet.

Immense and dense

The substance of the soul

The terror of the yawning, gaping cold

Of the defenseless senseless maze

Crammed into a hollow phrase:

The Written Rhyme!

Let Father Time

And Mother Nature take their toll

On this young fool

This elusive brain is but a tool

It palpitates, reverberates

It calculates its mighty sum, so white and numb

My meager footsteps through the age

My spring and winter, love and rage

Resentment and contentment fusing,

The confusing musings of a foolish sage:

My life, my soul

For words on a page.