decisions, decisions...

(apologies to Shakespeare)

Poetry or screenwriting? That is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind
to embrace an art I love
but that bittersweet delves
and draws from the human heart
its most pruned and precious blossoms
tiny cut by tiny cut

or to take arms against
the poignant turn of phrase
walled gardens of
clean, concise words
and end the need to contain
in fourteen rows
the immensity of the soul

no more, the pressing desire to train the perfect slam piece
that weaves its tendrils around the listeners' ears and throat
only to slap them witty on the cheek
their sudden laughter the proof
of wisely tended wordlings grown strong

to rest from tending
to sleep, perchance to dream
aye, there's the rub
what does a poet's heart become;
to what end its 3am wakefulness
when the poet sleeps on?

for in the strokes of urgent, unfettered pen
what wide, unmapped country lies ahead
of hilly dialogue and marshy directions

the traveller pauses, wondering

perhaps that five hours spent
grafting, lovingly watching
that one leaf unfurl perfectly

the counting of ways
the buds of May
the road not taken
the carrying of hearts
a dream within a dream within a dream

perhaps preferable, that searching
homeward
inward
for restraint and rhyme
than to ride into new and unknown lands
that puzzle the will
and make us rather bear those tasks we have
than fly to screenwriting assignments that we know not of?
thus two thousand words of uncertainty
make a coward of me
and turn my mind instead to
sixty lines of familiar torture

though there may be an enterprise
of great pith and moment
in me
still I may lose the name of action
to tap the undiscovered Jim Uhls in me
until 2010

***

Yes I do take poetry too seriously.And no, I'm sure screenwriting isn't actually like the unknown of death. :) And yes, I'll eventually decide which subject to enrol in this semester.