Poem of the Day: "Out of Ink…" by Rie Sheridan Rose

Songs of Eretz Poetry Review is pleased to present "Out of Ink…" by Rie Sheridan Rose.  Ms. Rose is the author of five chapbooks of poetry as well as contributor to anthologies as diverse as the Permian Basin Poetry Anthology and Terror Train. She is particularly found of fairy tales and poetics for inspiration. More on her work can be found at www.riewriter.com.

Out of Ink…

Rie Sheridan Rose

My pen is running out of ink

when I have so much more to say

to you, to them, to everyone

who might want to look

upon my words and despair…

well, hopefully not.

I do not like poems of quiet desperation

as well as I do poems of hope

and roads oft travelled.

Sometimes everyone

needs a break,

and fairy tales do come true

if you let them.

I believe this to be the case.

I will not eschew the horrible—

horror makes a fine living—

but I prefer to be peaceful

if given a choice.

Do you write

from the heart or the head?

Perhaps that makes a difference

in the themes your pen touches.

For now, the last

stray stars of black

have filtered to the page…

and I must end, as I began,

with a pen, running out of ink.

Poet's notes:  This poem was written in one of the workshops for the Austin International Poetry Festival. The original material was a block of stream-of-consciousness text, and the important part of the workshop was putting in the line breaks to make it poetic. I was particularly fascinated with enjambments, which I never really thought about before--though my poetry is often full of them--and giving weight to the ends of lines. It also encompasses my philosophy of poetry, which is that you can write poetry that embraces genre as well as more literary verse, but you have to be true to yourself no matter what you write.

Editor's Note:  I particularly like the ars poetica theme and the poet's use of metaphor in the final stanza.