I’ve never been much of a poet. Whenever the semi-annual poetry unit rolled around in English I would roll my eyes, pulled out the rhyming dictionary I kept stashed in the “I never read these” lower left-hand corner of my bedroom bookshelf, and start stringing together words at a hurried pace I associate only with trying to get the pain over as fast as possible. I’ve written one or two things over the past few years that I don’t think are complete crap, one of which I published on here and surely made my parents cringe. But mostly I stick to prose – the least unruly, it seems, form of word vomit unencumbered by the stylistic fashioning’s of poetry. No one looks at my work and asks if there’s a hidden rhyming pattern, or a syllable pattern, or any other pattern that, I can assure you, I didn’t do on purpose because I suck at rhyming and counting syllables is strangely challenging for me.

But, the things that we fear the most are also those most valuable to us were we to conquer them. Words spilling out onto a page without pressure or tension is a beautiful thing, but words fought for, sentences fought through, those have their own sense of glory.

Three of my friends in the last few weeks have pointed out that my some of my freewriting has taken on the aura of poetry. They ask me to read it aloud. I see what they are saying. There’s a definite rhythm and cadence, a lyrical quality despite the complete lack of fancy purposeful structure or rhyme dictionary nonsense that almost forces my head to bob as I read through.

I’ll be taking a poetry workshop this summer. We’ll see how it goes. Maybe I’ll share some stuff, maybe I’ll keep it to myself, maybe it’ll all end up hidden in a file labeled “failed attempt” deep in the recesses of my computer desktop. But they’ll be words I fought for, so a victory nonetheless.

Invictus

By William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of change

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.