Invocation to the Muse

Write (or substitute this for whatever creative outlet)

Write as if the gale force winds show up as wild warlords on horses with spears and armour dazzling

charging

at you

Write as if your blood cells will stop vibrating their dance of life if you take your hand off the page and wonder what’s for dinner

Write with furious explosion of the many wild and insurmountable thoughts and memories, ideas and possibilities that knock at your door and shakedown the columns that keep all in order

Write the gibberish, the uncouth, the unknowable and known, the impossible and possibly mad and pejoratively bad

Write like a possessed one who forgets food exists and

can’t but write with hypnotised obsession before a candle, bus shelter, cubicle at work

or mid sentence when words come flossing through.

Forget excusing yourself from the table politely

as if a hungry bore is chasing you tearing at your clothes about the gnaw your flesh unless the pen hits the paper

and you write it all out with fresh sigh.

Write as if your life depends on ever word however misplaced and unedited

And after the words have spilled and emptied another round

you may find

you will be gifted with passageways into worlds you could never have dreamed on

if you let the kettle dictate what you did next,

if you let the phone direct your precious thoughts,

if you let out there cast your net

rather than the ancient ship of Great Journeys with mast of gold imbued stem

and flag rising high, riding winds.

A flag that is seared into your memory that you see flash in moments of disarray and distraction.

A flag that is yours alone that flaps to a song sung

by a Siren on a imagined shore,

who sings just to make your flag dance, who sings a

song that only you can hear in a crowded room;

a song that shakes your shackled mind out of zombified assent

and forces your hand to grasp a pen,

a song sweet and treacherous with purpose to coerce your body to match your soul and write, write, write, write.

Other will not tell you the colour of the flag,

the symbols across its linen face,

Other will not sing the song this Siren of great truth sings in your ear.

You

will find these songs

like an adventurer with naught on mind but

find -

ing

the lead and transforming it’s contents

into gold, refined.

It’s up to you to choose

with song and flag

with paper ready to attack,

the pen

that liberates

your heart

and brings you

from the dead

back.