Poetic Difference

Time was short
But my lines were long.

If there was a story to be told
I was too breathless to tell it.

Here goes nothing, I said,
Scribbling a little more
For the sake of it.

Repetition…
Here goes nothing:
There’s a thing,
A device everybody
Uses for effect, yes?

After all, I’m old now
And poet or writer, I have
No more time left to explain.

Tick flaming tock…
It’s a downhill slog.
Van Morrison is singing
And I have lost
The will to live.

Here goes nothing,
The night whispers it
As darkness closes in.

Van’s song
Was about morning
And a philosphers’ stone
But I have no time for that.

If sleep comes can day
Be so far behind?

At least this once.

© BH, 2017

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Andy McCallum Crawford posed a question: ‘What is the difference between short story writers and poets?’ I wrote this as a reply.

I guess my thesis was about  economy. Not having (or taking) time to write.

While I wrote, Van Morrison was actually playing Philosopher’s Stone. Sometimes he drags on a bit. I managed to write this before the six minutes six seconds were up.

And the image, well, that’s Van’s bulky body in silhouette from the album cover but It’s me looking out from under that hat at the Ring of Brodgar.