What Are Words Worth Poem by Paul Brookes

moments of extreme isolation lap at my feet,
that luxury of stillness in a becalmed sea.
to float undistracted.
there is no pinnacle of achievement in poetry
there are only open boarders
no fields or boundaries just branching trees
or bejewelled flowers

No rights or wrongs but a reacting to the visual
listening to the sounds with which mark paper
with rustling hieroglyphs or the stimulus of words
tippling or trickling, layers of slip waiting the sgraffito artist
to pen flashes, tracking time in an up welling of fantasy.

refiguring new narratives from old
moulding and shaping it to fit those songs of love and longing
ecstasy or despair.
dressing up pain in fancy clothes so we are in control.
life is more than a series of events birth, death, marriage.
or an incomputable life sentence or static pose.

Silent shifting sounds ebb and flow in surges of life
each breath a commitment to death that inevitable companion.
more than a set of entrances and exits or paltry paradoxes.
Life is a blend of light and dark, no black and white but smudged edges
of bleached surreal greys and dystopian visions.

life is a field of daisies blowing in the wind
nodding heads following the track of the suns daily course.
the muse mismanages the meanderings but refuses responsibility
trying to weave a tapestry from moon beams an impossibility.
some loose the arrows of scorn but the words always take control
or the mendacious Muse mimics truth but she has feet of clay.

Some days she whispers in my ears but most times she is silent
leaving me an orphanedvoice stopped child.
so my riches consist not in the extent of my words but in the fewness of them.