Treading Water

What is stamina 
With poor technique?

Physically strong 
But mentally weak

Trying to keep up with the athletes 
Who are at their peak
 
Watch how they
Gracefully glide through the pool
Faces down In the water

This is to swim properly 
Can't do it
Although I ought'er 

All I manage is to ungracefully
Tread water
Every time I immerse my head
I cough and I splutter

Just the cold of the water gives me the chills
Bukowski 
Gibran
Blake... 
Lend me some gills

Meaningful metaphors 
Dictated by rhyme
Creates prisons of words
Always there to remind...

In some abstract way  
A clock's a jailer
To time

Without instruments 
To measure 
How each day ends and is begun
Stripped back to the simplistic 
Miracle of the rising 
And setting of the sun
  

Poetry without rhymes 
Is how the most popular poems tend to be 
To me it seems so unnatural 
A piano playing out of key

However...
 
Popularity isn't something I crave 
Being true to myself  
I ride the crest of my own wave

Take a deep breath
Analyse 
Scrutinise
Disect
And digest

First thing for breakfast 
I need
The pages of dictionaries

Washed down with 
The visions of visionaries

A Nonconformist 
In a conformist society
Drinking twice as much
Like I'm preparing for sobriety

Cider 
Larger 
Vodka 
Blackcurrant =

My drink of choice 

A turbo diesel

My prop
My elixir
A necessity...

My artists easel 

 

 

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