The Preacher

Music inspired.

So here I am walking,
Minding my business,
As I always do,
With my earphones on,
Listening to how the sound was sewn together in that particular piece.
I listen to the lead guitar �" it's great! Especially the solo; I can feel that the guitarist is great.

I like repeating songs and listening to singular instruments,
One at a time.
This time I'm listening to the drums �"
All drums are like solos if you listen carefully,
The way they keep changing.

So here I am minding my business,
With the drums going, changing, controlling every instrument,
Controlling me.
All of a sudden, I feel a gentle tap on my shoulder.
"S**t!" my brain says,
It just resonates in there, bumping from corner to corner,
Curve to curve,
With each and every inch of it,
Every part of me.
F*****g humans!
That too stays in there.

I remove my earphones,
Smile.
I return the greeting.

"Do you have time for the word of God?" he asks.
"F**k!" I scream, I shout, I pull a stampede, I'm angry.
I smile.
I pull an excuse about some job I'm rushing to.
The preacher says something after I had my earphones on.
By that time, I'm at the drums again.
They are preaching to me.
I listen.
I smile.

Author's Note

A piece about personal space, music and forced ideas that we go through as humans because of society.

Reviews

[JayG]

• A piece about personal space,

Not really. It's a short essay—a diary entry, that you chopped into short lines. You didn't even remove the space between words where you put in the line feeds. That's NOT how poetry is written.

And as a minor piece of advice: You say: "All of a sudden, I feel a gentle tap on my shoulder." Seriously? EVERY tap on the shoulder to get your attention is sudden. So including mention of it serves only to slow the pace of the reading.

Bottom line: There's a LOT to writing poetry than there appears to be. It is a profession, after all, one they offer degree programs for in the universities.

Poets have been refining those skills for centuries, so if you acquire them you avoid all the traps, and begin writing with professional skills. But...skip that step and you're guaranteed to find all the traps, and, not notice that you have,

So, take the time to learn those skills from a good book, like Mary Oliver's, A Poetry Handbook, because nothing else works.