Poetry - The Jabberwockian

I hate the double space default for poetry. I have written Inkitt several times about this and no satisfaction... check out a couple of my poems and tell me what you think.

I love Poetry, and the Poets who write it. When I was a young man I had an unreasonable fear of sharing it. I needed to fall in love a few times and get my heart stepped on a few times in order to not be embarrassed by it. This all started when I was 4 or five. I was deeply in love with Cheryl Yankee, a girl next door. Then there was Hayley Mills. Disney’s Pollyanna, The Trouble With Angels and both girls in The Parent Trap. When Pollyanna fell out of that tree and became paralyzed, my Mom told me I cryed for a week. I still get a tug on my heart thinking about her. Before I go on, my male pride forces me to tell you that I am not effeminate. I raced motocross, played men's league baseball, and worked as a merchant seaman on the Great Lakes, among many other manly endeavors. When I was in High School I had an English teacher who brought in a record player. She played Sounds of Silence, by Simon and Garfunkle over and over again then gave us an assignment. Write a report on the meaning of the song. Paul Simon wrote this song but he actually only wrote the first line years before as a child... "Hello Darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk with you again." He would lock himself in the bathroom and sing this to himself. It was many years later that he finished it. Sometime great poetry comes out of order and one line at a time. Sometimes the first line like Paul's song, sometimes the last. Whenever one of those lines comes into my head I write it down and figure one day I will need it badly. I was not a particularly good student but this intrigued me. I wrote my report and got one of my few A's until college. Everybody who actually wrote a report got an A, but the teacher said mine was the most well written and logical. From that day on I was hooked on language and especially poetry. I don't just read poetry, or books, I study it. I turned into a Grammer Nazi. Get your and you're mixed up and I would tell you about it. My Mom had a book of poems by Edgar A. Guest and I read the whole thing verse by verse and cover to cover. I think I picked up his style and tend to write like him. Edgar Guest was the poet lauriat of the Detroit Free Press and wrote a poem a week for many years. Mom loved his work. I love his work. Edgar Allen Poe's Annabelle Lee is heartbreaking for me. He wrote this poem to help him deal with the untimely death of his wife. You should see a bit of Poe in the Pixie poems. "Hello Darkness, my old friend..."

On Poets

To use the gifts of mind and heart

and not lock them away.

is to share of life’s experience

the most intimate of ways.

To take a gift and give of it

as freely as one can,

is to bless forever those who see

the things you understand.

Randy L. Indish

February 17th. 1982

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