Poetic Reflections: unstructured

i waited all month for this column to zap me with a bolt of inspiration as they’re apt to do until i had nearly despaired with three days left in june

as luck or fate would have it the theme snuck up furtively and i was thinking about it before i even knew that it was the theme of my next poetry column

pretty sneaky if you ask me

but there it was inside my head at the usual inopportune moment

the words that occurred fled and I found myself at my desk typing a description of the event like an aftermath or afterword only it isn’t

it’s more of a beginning

this is my first column that hasn’t been crammed inside my volume of verse ‘poetic reflections keep the heart of a child’

the only thing I managed to retrieve from that rushent gush of lines in one ear and out the other whispered by my muse was a single term

unstructured

which is the theme of course

so i now have to stare at the word and contemplate why it’s here

what it’s doing on my page

i assume it has something to do with the abandonment of structure

wow that is really brilliant even for me

it’s also very different for me because i tend to be a stickler for structure and adore things like paragraph indents and punctuation and capitalization yet here i am typing without the aid of those conventions which feels incredibly brave and reckless

not to mention slightly peculiar

not that there’s anything wrong with peculiarity because i rather enjoy being peculiar myself as you must know if you’ve read any of my more peculiar poems

but this truly is a stretch since i am a big fan of accuracy and correctitude when it comes to particular aspects of language and writing

other aspects i just toss out the window

it’s especially difficult for me to type the pronoun i without hitting shift

yes that takes tremendous willpower

eccentric a writer though i am i do cling to certain traditions as you can see since i have not been able to bring myself to let go of the apostrophe

i just can’t seem to pry it from my feeble grasp

oh well at least i’m doing fairly well for a scribbler as bound to the tools of writing while breaking most of the rules

and here i am shattering some more

look ma no hands i’m typing with my feet

okay not actually

i can’t lift my legs that high

and i still can’t recall the words i was supposed to write

i am left with one profound thought in my head with which to compose a poem

it’s a good thing my volume of verse is already being released or i’d have probably stuffed this into it too

no no that’s not appropriate for a poem so i must think of another profound thought

it’s tougher than i thought

i’m sure i had some earlier

oh well as usual i must pen my next poem without a single thought in my head

at least that hasn’t changed

great now i’m getting deja vu as if i don’t have enough to deal with

it’s so creepy i’ll just have to write a poem about it