The Prodigal Child
If necessity is the mother of invention
then imagination must be the dad.
Grandma must have been patience
and the grandfather must have had
a penchant for puttering in toolsheds
and building something from naught
so there might be a few aunts and uncles
who may not have turned out as they ought
(spare parts sometimes being scarce).
Perhaps there are siblings who taunted
invention when she was a child
and made her feel ugly and haunted
her self esteem till she doubted
her sense of her own self worth
so she kept her ideas to herself
instead of enriching the Earth
with her brilliant ideas and advances
bowing instead to her siblings
and inventing them new toys to play with
to quiet their whining and quibbling.
Then one day she looked in the mirror,
saw the person she knew she could be,
saw the dreams that she could believe in,
saw the things that she could achieve.
So at night now, when others are sleeping,
their toys all greedily clutching,
she works on her plans for new improved ways
to save the world from destruction.
#95
Linda Studley 
Totally agree with you 🙂
Reblogged this on Launch Port – The Open Door Business Blog.
Thank you Jack, I appreciate the exposure. 🙂
I like the metaphorical nature of the poem and the rhyming scheme. My first instinct was that the last line was crying out to end in the word ‘destructing’ to maintain the purity of the rhyme (although there’s nothing at all wrong with half-rhymes). But as ‘destruct’ means ‘destroy’ it would have to be ‘self-destructing’ which would throw out the meter (unless it was tweaked so that the last line began ‘The world’ and the previous line was tweaked to read ‘She works on her plans for new ways to save’) Sorry, not intending to teach you how to write poetry, you’re a 100 times better than me at it! Just an observation.
Always happy to get your feedback Tony. These poems get posted totally raw, no editing allowed, so when I complete the year I’ll have lots to do to knock them into shape for the next book. I find that leaving them for a time gives me the opportunity to take a step back from them and view them objectively when editing. Or at least more objectively than if I tried to edit right after writing them. For me it makes the editing process much more enjoyable,relaxed, and productive. But you’re right, that line didn’t sit really well with me and it’ll probably undergo some re-writing if I decide to include it in the next book. 🙂
Yes, I know what you mean about just getting it written. I’m the same with my short stories; once I get an idea in my head I have to get it on paper while it’s all flowing out (what is it they say? – ‘don’t get it right, get it writ’?) I then go back next day and spend longer editing than I did writing the story! Which is why I admire you for posting your poems exactly as they left your head, and I think that most of them are the finished article anyway and are often better for being in that raw form (but it’s still a brave thing to do). Yes, I can imagine that the editing will be an enjoyable exercise once you get those 365 under your belt! 🙂
It’s all a journey, Tony. And I reject the stereotype of the the tortured artist. If I can’t find the joy in every part of my art, whether it’s writing, editing, drawing, painting, playing, singing etc…. then I’m obviously not doing it right! lol