Unwritten

PWW Entry
Team USA East
Poetry
39 Lines

Quote: "Put blinders on to those things that conspire to hold you back, especially the ones in your own head."
Meryl Streep

Unwritten

My shoulders are heavy
with the burden of voices in my head,
the echoes of doubts, of what ifs,
reverberating the phantom slams
of doors never opened, of talent clamped shut
like a brand new book, too treasured
to crack the spine, too new
to dog-ear the pages.

What slammed door,
what broken spine or dog-eared page,
has ever been more damaging,
more painful to bear
than the unrealized dream,
the unread book,

the unwritten one?

And what right do these phantom voices have
to rain on my dreams, to deafen me
with doubt, to numb me with the complacency
of believing that a poem written is enough,
without offering it to others
for the tasting? 

Go, I tell you!
You whispering naysayers
crowding my head; you ill-selected voices
from my childhood.  There are more
where you came from, encouraging ones
I failed to tuck in my pocket as I grew up,
thinking yours more important, more true.

Now, I will gather the encouraging voices like dandelions,
tie them together in a circle, and wear them like a crown
while I write my words, and nothing will stand between me
and the unwritten, between me
and the written I have left unshared.  Nothing,
as long as I decide, each morning, to put action
behind these well-meaning words of mine. 
For my greatest regret on my dying bed
would be that this book would forever remain in my head,
but to the world, would remain

unwritten, unread. 


SWPoet