Someone googled that, "Jerry Carlin/poetry" so I did too! oh, it takes you here and there to bits of me, but no poems, no published volumes. It doesn't even take you to my youth when I did write poetry. One of the first rules of writing is to keep in mind your audience and I only wrote poetry for one.
Writing is not difficult. It is telling a story, setting a scene, creating a curiosity, a little mystery and a heroine. It is a descriptive painting in words and can be told layer by layer, each brush stroke singular and purposeful, shadows telling time. Stories can be told after the fact, like restoring a Renaissance Painting, removing layers, chips of old paint to discover the original.
I have time now, a luxury accumulated by accident, words come as a mist, swirl like snowflakes and disappear on the water's edge. Difficult as catching kisses but I am going to try.
It was easier to write in my youth when I had an audience, even if just one. Easier to write when I didn't know the future and it was all make believe, imagination and dandelion wishes, flowers in a garden with no foot steps.
All words now seem like travel writing, descriptions and places of where I have been and I wonder whether Shakespeare wrote love stories from memory?
I might write poetry and I might not. The truth is I do not know what I will write. There is no story boiling within me and that makes it an exercise, doesn't it?
You would think that at my age I would have discovered a truth worth telling but maybe the answer is "over easy", "medium well", not rare or well done at all, no extremes, careful planing on a course well set.
God that would be boring and so predictable and so not me at all.
So, maybe I will find something, "start with the now" and go backwards or do what I have always done, jump ahead and fly! Scenery, timing, shadows, water and moonlight, budding flowers and dancing butterflies, songs carried by the wind, a heroine, the temperature, what is happening everywhere and in a particular place and why we do things at all?
It is all poetry, every bit of it, every syllable, every initial carved on a tree, every sunrise the first one and may be the last one. Every breath taken is poetry and I am honored to be googled together: Jerry Carlin and Poetry.
My garden and other stuff is HERE
7 comments:
That is beautiful!
Oh Lordy, this makes me cry since I am old enough to be thinking the same things. Surely there is something in my life that made it worthwhile living. Where did the dreams go? You say it so very well. This may have been written as prose but it's pure poetry in my books!
Do you know that I think I'm the only I know of who doesn't like poetry? Give me a good old novel any day!! (I hated dissecting poetry in high school and the all the obscure meaning that some people can draw from them. Why can't the poet just mean what he says?) LOLOL
Jerry, You are one big poem in itself . No kidding ! BJ
I know exactly what you mean, writing is more difficult when your older, why is that I wonder. It just seems to flow when your young. Love the poetic way you describe writing, I doubt you'll have any problems finding something wonderful to write about.
Love everything written by you. Keep writing, about your life it is worth it. You would leave behind for your girls to know you more, know you as young man,know you as you grew up to be the person you are now. It is an inspiration that you would be leaving behind, so never stop writing.
I keep reading what my husband writes, it gives me a new insight into his character, makes me feel closer to him, as he keeps spinning tales of his life. It is all very interesting Jerry, so never stop sharing titbits about your life.
Beautiful words, Jerry.
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