This Poem was Submitted By: Regis L Chapman On Date: 2008-07-28 14:13:14 . . . Click Here To Mail this Poem to a Friend!

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Traveling Book

We have questions So we move again with time a tale is told again the same journey as Homer the learning lesson of the loner What Where When Why words in stone at ease smiling sycophantic night stars moving cars mountain high desert dry water wet sun set Thank You and Please Who knows where these words are read? Who knows who is reading them? More likely, this book has not traveled any distance in some time, left to gain companions of dusty skin The tune is "Shallow" by Porcupine Tree and then "The Gayatri Mantra" with Deval Premal and so the words travel such a long distance and are printed, sung or not across the ages and pages or used to start a fire traveling along the wire to the mind and so tejas lurks here in the between the lines which only rhyme untypical, unrhythmical, sometimes transcendence seems only to keep me in time writing this next line reading reading reading am I is it I who read? was I not also a writer? and soon my love will fly on the wings of wind back into her past in order to be free from it much like Neil Peart is in this ghostly travelogue which brings me, dear traveler, to a now long remembered are the only good things to read traveling books? aren't all books of a travel, or travail? How couched does that mover recline? How quickly does that frozen mind define? why does the universal mind so harken to the multiplicity of scenery? We have questions and question marks we travel along in reality we travel in dreamlines and mark times years are days and lines summarized and summarily dismissed so easily and again I ask, if I do not travel dear reader have I gone anywhere? Jack London compressed his near death loneliness of even breath into a lifetime of profit for himself and others what illusions do I seek to distract me from my work? what experience shall gather unto me like the books on my shelf? I will have stories to tell about my travels and so I will discover the stories of others and amalgamate them into my own detached missive and will I have traveled with you dear reader then? Will I? Where have we gone? -towns, -burgs, -villes is what I remember from my traveling mind and the lonely approbation of boredom and sameness experienced with different name proclamations of the World's Largest This or That and yet I have all these thises and thats accruing in my own room silence and peace seem to slow the time, slow the need to find and yet move we shall dear reader in ageless time frozen here in your hands go out and do something with it we have questions and words with a letter W to fill in the gaps of this container do what you must do what you trust and when you cannot trust questions replace answers move and the wind shall find your back and the sun shall play with your hair and you shall find what you seek until silence slows your hand and your feet and the breath becomes slow then must needs do do what you trust answers replace questions and now that you trust again you will know What Where When Why words in stone at ease smiling sycophantic night stars moving cars mountain high desert dry water wet sun set Thank You and Please

Copyright © July 2008 Regis L Chapman

Additional Notes:
This poem was written in the space between my reading the excellent travel book by Neil Peart "Ghost Rider" who is the drummer for the band in the soundtrack of my life, Rush. Also, my Leila is traveling a long way soon. It's eerie how closely his travels followed my own, not chronologically, but I have been to so many of the places he showed in the book, and in some real sense this book about healing, reading and traveling gave me a permission to heal myself too from the melancholy surrounding my control behaviors and begin to see myself more for who I really am. What does it mean to travel is a question here. I travel in books and music and in life too. On bicycles and cars for years together... ah what a beautiful life! Om Shantih, Regis


This Poem was Critiqued By: James Edward Schanne On Date: 2008-08-03 14:25:16
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 1.00000
While I found the stanza: What Where When Why words in stone at ease smiling sycophantic night stars moving cars mountain high desert dry water wet sun set Thank You and Please To actually be the weakest part of the poem and so wondered at its repeat , I really injoyed the rest of it especially the third stanaza, Thanks for letting me read it.


This Poem was Critiqued By: Claire H. Currier On Date: 2008-07-29 07:19:35
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.83333
Interesting title poet, I am always amazed at the amount of words you put into one poem..........seems like you and the pen breath together , the ink flows, your feelings and emotions are released and the end product is always wonderful. Good for you, good for those who have a chance to stop by and read it too. God Bless, claire
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