A Caged Songbird Poem by Venkateswaran Krishnan Sreenivasan

Where is my poetry gone? The string-less music of my mind
Like a caged songbird; incarceration of my soul, unkind
And stifling my streams of noble thoughts in an alley blind
And leaving me like an over-wound clock hard to unwind.

Poems emerge from fertile minds serene
Like the blooming rose with summer sheen
Disquieting events disturbing peace
Negate creative thinking and make me ill at ease

Every human being is a poem mostly unsung
A story with its fancies, foibles thinly strung
Into a fabric that is outworn by the onslaught of age
That makes illegible every page

Abstract and reflective ideas poets conceive
And nurse them into verse for the music they weave
Like the expectant mothers who endure in pleasure
The pangs of labor to own a priceless treasure

Happenings in the world, bad and sad
Stir up a brain storm and make me mad
The fire of anger and anguish kindles my fad
Of creating poems that make me glad

Poetry is the very breath of my life
That enlivens me amidst this earthly strife
And soothes my mind like my beloved wife
Selfless, caring and curing to keep me safe

My poems are the offspring of my inner vision
Undimmed by the mist of illusion
Unhampered by human equation
And illumined by the light of devotion