Intervening Poetry
by john clare
Can you take my life and make it a poem? he said,
lately everything has taken on new meaning
and I would rather you make sense of it instead
of a higher power coming down and intervening.
So I took a close look into his life and found
the reason why things were void of rhyme.
I took the quill and parchment to write it down,
trying not to be too vague or sublime.
It took several revisions before I was pleased
and presented it to him with nervous anticipation,
hoping his life now a poem would allow him to see
and appreciate the finer insights of inspiration.
It wasn't long before I received a call
and it was my friend all in a terrible confusion
that it wasn't what he expected at all
Where did you get the words you were using?
Such are the traps we enter when our friends
ask the poets to compose lines upon their lives
and the barbs stick and the bleeding begins
as if my pen was meant as a daggered knife.
So I took the eraser and began anew the lines
and wrote a simple nursery rhyme easy to
understand and certain not to offend this time,
but as a poet of lives I was through.
And on the wall framed for all to see
is the poem composed with mixed intention.
Each time it is read I cringe greatly
for you see, he really needed that intervention.
