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| (Image from Air Plant Design Studio) |
I Lost My Receipt
What will I do with my creative gifts?
I don't think I can exchange them
for a videocassette recorder,
or even a microwave oven.
They might clash with the wallpaper,
even framed in full museum mounting.
Most likely, they will fade in the
window sill under the suburban sun.
They probably won't look good on
the coffee table with a nice plant.
Damnit! Guess I'll have to haul them
out into the world and use them...
-Paul Whiting
(a.k.a., Small All White in the Forest)
"I am no barrier to its sun; the light and I are as one!"
My Poetic Notes:
The reason that I wrote this poem can be summed up with the following statement: This poem discusses how my entire life, I have had a difficult time not knowing what to do with my "gifts" as a writer and artist. For some reason, I have always felt that being an artist was being a kind of "failure."
My guess is that this has a lot to do with what is considered normal in our culture: getting a "regular job" (which you probably don't really like anyway) and then retiring after so many years, without necessarily having expressed your "True Desires in Life!"
By the way, for those of you who are familiar with what a videocassette recorder (VCR) is, this poem should be like a walk down 1980's memory lane! Plus, microwave ovens had just become popular, so that's another stroll down the 1980's memory lane...
...It's time to put on your sweatbands and excercise in your spandex to a video, starring some celebrity health guru, that you bought on television from an infomercial. (Woohoo!)
And this poem was also published on my "Paul Whiting — A Creative Writer" blog (please see the hyperlink below for the blog), since I feel that the message in this poem applies to the message that I am trying to convey through "Paul Whiting — A Creative Writer."
This poem was written in Salt Lake City, Utah.
-Paulee
https://paulwhitingwriting.blogspot.com
This "Small All White in the Forest" Post No. 006 was edited on January 15th, 2023.
"Poetry is using the fewest words possible in order to describe all that is possible to describe." –Paul Whiting [June 1st, 2022]
