Within my mind there hides a whitened stag
whose face appears those times I find my voice.
I saw him first within the books I write
though handsome, he appeared robed like a hag.
He offered my overgrown mind a choice:
To keep on writing the story I’d found
or follow him forward into the dark.
I chose the book.

Three years passed. He came to me underground.
He showed my voice which ways it bloomed in sound
He gave me songs from singers disparate,
moved my fingers – six strings in that garret
recalled old choice: follow or drown in song.
I chose to follow him into the dark.

Here in the tunnel’s bend, I see no light
but that doesn’t mean nothing shines ahead.
I hear a voice…

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about the 54 poems written at 27 ::

After much deliberation, I decided to keep the whole tradition of doubling my age and writing that many poems in a year. You’ll notice that April Thirtyish has already passed, so I’m late in posting. I’ve gotten about half of them written and will begin posting this week.

I started this whole mess with 46 poems written at 23, most of which are still up on the site and many of which are awful. Those poems I wrote because I read somewhere that the best age for poetry is 23. I was turning 24 and had an existential crisis.

Then I got over it.

Suddenly I was 25 and thought, “Why not do it again?” So I doubled my age and wrote 50 poems at 25. Again, most of these are still on the site and I’m proud of one or two of them.

Now I’m twenty-eight and it’s almost a principle, almost an undeniable fact of life. When the wild Lancelot is in his native habitat and his age is in an odd year, he will be secreting poetry. I do this because poetry is important, because we must take an active role in the creation of new language or else our language dies.

That means I must write, I must learn how to create better poems even if I’m awful at it — everyone must because the fate of our culture’s at stake. For me, this year, that’s 54 poems at 27.

So I’ll schedule these suckers out and give it a go. Follow along with the category 54 @ 27.

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image by Always Shooting

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