Give a poet a word, something quite absurd like lemon curd, OK that’s two words. What can be done with lemon curd, that uses and twists and turns words, that makes them rhyme in perfect time. Poets can play with its use, turning it to radioactive slime; using it as a cleaning product to get rid of dirt and grime. Letting it run through their hands like alien sticky slime, but, then there is a favorite of mine, slap it on hot buttered toast and eat them one at a time.
Give a poet a word or a phrase and they will play for days and days, fitting it in poems, different ways, but sometimes their mind will go blank and at the paper they will stare, until a new idea comes to bare, something abstract they might dare to write, with flare that will ignite passion, no word ration.
Then one day someone will say, bet they can’t write one about this. The poet will writhe and twist and turn and discern, using everything they have learned. Oh, how they wish they had never started, when will it end, it will drive them round the bend. Suddenly, the penny drops and out of nowhere an idea flops. Ink drops start to flow as the poem starts to grow and grow, it just ebbs and flows, this heady prose, where it stops no one knows.
© All Rights Reserved Mark Symmonds 2017
Rhythm of the Ink 