The Poet’s Alibi

THE POETS ALIBI

I live in

a world of dreams

Where despair is transcended

Like a drop trail of oil
In Antarctic storms

Nursing vision, I range my soul
High up the lookouts

Drunk with ways of seeing
Climbing for the star’s perspective

Where the sky is without limits…
…. I can study men like ants

Crawing full-tilt on the treadmill
To escape the cry of trod-on dreams…

They would bring me down,
Enmesh me, overwhelm me,

But this vision spirit is above
Them… it lifts me beyond

And I soar up their yearnings
Crying out: “Mine!” “MINE”

Break the doors of the fantastic
Sprout wings for the vision-forged eagle

Scribe paths I see from my advantage
Draw a map for Vision to travel…

I am the maker of myths to live in
The rhapsodist of fancies

Unmuting the knots of tied-tongues
Reading the groans of our speechlessness

Until all our bones sing
Pumping our hearts fuller

Hitting the nail of veracity
To drive home the kingdom of mustard

Where spiritlife is free
And everyone’s truest dream

Becomes a life that
Needs no alibis.

1987 © Wayne David Knoll

Paddy Russell and his Mustard Seed Project inspired the mustard edit. The poet is hard done by, hardly valued unless you write ballards a hundred years ago, a hard ask. This manifesto of poetic freedom is a profession of a profession. It rose declaiming those who would stifle oncoming poetry infavour of the schackles of convention (lies)Or respectable moral (hypocritical) society and its I-you bound need for permission. I wrote those last words in 1993 and I still agree with them. I believe a calling or vocation gives us a near divine right to speak up. When the bishop of Canberra was asked by a priest for permission to do something innovative, he replied: do not ask permission, just do it, and I’ll scold you if you’re wrong, take the credit for supporting you if you are right. Oh for us to be the author of such an authoritivness again!