A few weeks ago, I published a book on Amazon: “Seeds of Poetry: 21 Methods to Inspire Your Poetry and Other Creative Writings” with 21 chapters suggesting ways to inspire your poetry or other creative writings. Each chapter highlights a different method.

Of course, when you write a book suggesting that doing this or that will help your creativity, then it is important to prove the value of the book’s content.

With that challenge in mind, my most recent collection of poetry, “Poems by My Cat” was inspired by one of the techniques explained in Chapter 5 of “Seeds of Poetry,” entitled “Be A Something.”

I have now started another series of poems based on a different chapter – Chapter 11 “Inspired by a Picture.” I hope to get another slim volume of 25 or so poems produced by using this technique. I have written two poems from this method so far using a series of related images. Here is the second poem.

Both Sides of a Pane of Glass

Outside my window the world
Is descending into intersecting chaos,
Polar bears are drowning
And ice caps, both North and South,
Are sloughing sheets of ancient ice and snow
That melt like icicles in the Spring.
The ocean waters have risen as much this year
As all my other years combined
And that in itself was a remarkable number.

Fascism is on the rise
Using their best canard of the other,
Aided by the mind melting madness
Of three generations of television –
I’ve watched 600,000 hours of TV
How about you?

The super-rich continue their everlasting and boring game
Of owning everything
And controlling every life –
It’s more convenient for them.
Yet, they each have the same number of breaths
And heartbeats as I do,
And this is what they do?
What a fucking waste of money
They are.

Inside my window, I am pondering
The places I will never see again
And the things I will never have again.
Ice cream has become a luxury beyond my reach.
Sometimes it is finances…
But even when an extra royalty check
Comes in
Or some other bounty of my efforts
Raises my monthly budget,
I cannot risk the extra fats and sugars
And maintain the balance of my fragile health.

What an awkward spot for a sentient being
To be in.
The creative imagination of my average brain still churns
And my aching hands still attempt to carve a better way.
Yet the one solution I know
That will answer everything around me,
I keep putting off, knowing
Circumstances will narrow my options down to that one.
And then I will take hold of my awareness
And move it elsewhere
Or, more bluntly, die!

I will show the picture when the book comes out, I don’t want to put too much pressure on the little chipmunk inside me that actually writes the poems…

Feel free to critique or praise the poem in the comments section!