Trav's Thoughts

Take This Tune is a feature hosted by my pal Jamie at Duward Discussion. Jamie puts up a video prompt complete with lyrics to the song, and the task is to find another song or to write something inspired by the title of the song or something in the lyrics.

I really enjoy participating in Jamie's feature because of where the prompts take my thoughts and emotions. This week's prompt is The Things We Do For Love, a song released in 1976 by the English group 10cc.

This week I have...nada. It isn't often I'm completely stumped by a prompt. But this week I just couldn't wrap my thoughts around anything.

So as I sometimes do when I'm in doubt, or just blank...I go to the Wayback Machine. I guess the only thing my poem below and the prompt song have in common is that they both have the word love in them.


FOR LOVE OF WORDS

As I think, so shall I become, evolved
in perception as much as in deed,
Wandering far afield on rational plains, yielding
effortlessly to the subtlety of vision.

Unhampered by solidity does the mind itself proclaim
a knowledge unseen. . .vistas upon horizons,
Distorted normality in a world gone missing
from itself; consciousness devoid of reason or sense.

Stimulated as by intellect, makers of a new rhetoric;
to strive in the unattainable glory of articulate rhyme;
Lofty eloquence grandly spoken to replace substance,
clarity foregone in vehement poesy.

Passionate speakers they, grandiose and bombastic,
blanketing nonsense in ornately turned phrase.
Pompous and foolish, but succeeding to best the fools,
almighty speech broker, bargaining his dose of Roget's.

The poet no less the offender, archly wrings meaning
from none via assorted rhythmic fancy.
Intonation his rule, pure diction on the page;
metaphoric euphoria in an overture of language.

Such as these do equate life's purpose to a word,
beautifully set in print with its fellows in
Happy pursuit of indelible verse; ticketed as prized
work by souls lost in pursuit of less.

For want of a simple fashioning of words to encase
a meaning clear and untainted by fanciful muse
Do some seek a widening of the gates, marrying mind to
vision, blending a thought with its true word.

Deeded in time to each thing comes real meaning,
uncluttered by pieces of man's rude intellect.
Brilliant insight stands apace, waiting for a simple thing;
thought, once accepted, keys knowledge.

Unfettered light then unleashed upon us all, and with
its luminescence the need to embellish is lost.
Speak what is meant and what is conveyed will be known
to all, understood for its own, for love of words.

This has been an original poem by Travis Cody, copyright 1992.