PWW Team East Poetry Entry March 2013 Session |
PWW Entry Team USA East Poetry 39 Lines Quote: "Put blinders on to those things that conspire to hold you back, especially the ones in your own head." Meryl Streep Unwritten My shoulders are heavy with the burden of voices in my head, the echoes of doubts, of what ifs, reverberating the phantom slams of doors never opened, of talent clamped shut like a brand new book, too treasured to crack the spine, too new to dog-ear the pages. What slammed door, what broken spine or dog-eared page, has ever been more damaging, more painful to bear than the unrealized dream, the unread book, the unwritten one? And what right do these phantom voices have to rain on my dreams, to deafen me with doubt, to numb me with the complacency of believing that a poem written is enough, without offering it to others for the tasting? Go, I tell you! You whispering naysayers crowding my head; you ill-selected voices from my childhood. There are more where you came from, encouraging ones I failed to tuck in my pocket as I grew up, thinking yours more important, more true. Now, I will gather the encouraging voices like dandelions, tie them together in a circle, and wear them like a crown while I write my words, and nothing will stand between me and the unwritten, between me and the written I have left unshared. Nothing, as long as I decide, each morning, to put action behind these well-meaning words of mine. For my greatest regret on my dying bed would be that this book would forever remain in my head, but to the world, would remain unwritten, unread. SWPoet |