To be or not to be, an artiste’s question:

Only an artiste would make mind suffer. ©

The pen strokes on virgin page,

Or should I use quill or nib to calm waves of indecision,

And the indecisiveness? To cry: to scream;

That’s it; the quill; by choosing this tool, will this be the end?

The anxiety and agony of pens choice;

To flesh out lines, ’tis consternation

Directing myself? I wish, as I sleep; 

To dream of devotion: dare I hope;

Within dreams of a following:  what imaginations come;

When my mind shuffles about the field of dreams;

Images flicker and die; Imagery I can respect.

Artistes can be tied up betwixt rejection and respect, forever;

Could rejection be accepted over this life?

These torments and wrongs for the Writer need not to be so consumed,

Fear no more the frown of a critic’s brow.

Forget not, their influence is a mere moment. Our patient endeavour across undiscovered country, to gain merit; further acclaim;

Lays bare the thorns of critique’s counsel.

The pang to bring forth such a hue of talent, bourn through honest toil, halts my stride and I look back in awe.

May cause us to pause in awe. Oh! Such wonder in dreams.

He had better be aware of the long nights of creative agony

Spent, hunched over page with lines that dust seem a child’s etching.

How I dids’t tear out my hair, mutter and swear;

Such is the torment of a Writer’s life. The all consuming fear is to be

Abandoned on a dark dusty shelf, like an

 Undiscovered manuscript that’s lost to outrageous fortune.

Oh! The angst; the calumny on my will.

 The course down which future will flow is as unclear,

as a ‘Droplet of water racing down yonder window pain’.

But, ‘Hold’, do not be so engaged with such vagueness, listen to audience applaud my poetry. Fly to their counsel; embrace their office o’er and o’er. Layers of creativity burst forth from this mortal coil, as the first flower of spring bursting from winter’s bosom. Butterfly’s flutter within, as ink tipped quill gently caresses the untouched page, now flavoured by creative actions. Perchance I may create a ‘Painting of Words’

A tapestry, to will kingdoms to embrace uncharted seas;

For if choice is to be or not to be? I choose ‘to be’.

©Phil Golding 0206