Out of the blue they tumble, spilling
across the page, shouting, thrilling
to their own songs and sounds, rattling
the gates of convention, battling
to be heard – scattering everywhere
in shapeless masses, in triplets and pairs,
on envelopes and newspaper margins,
on menus, post-its and paper napkins.
A rag-bag of words, a verbal maze,
a couplet or two, a peach of a phrase.
From the chaos of this wordly storm
the semblance of a verse is born,
shy at first, with unsteady feet,
with thoughts and metre incomplete,
with unfit rhymes and erratic style,
with story lines unreconciled.
And it is my pleasure to soothe and nurse
the growing pains of this youthful verse;
lost in the tangles of these troubled lines
I find myself,
free from the tangles of a troubled mind.