Excerpt from Songs of the Soul
To the Muse:
I’ve ransacked dictionaries,
plunging headlong into thickets
of verb, adverb, metaphor, simile,
for words as sweet as living water—
words so alive they singe the flesh
and turn the soul to ashes.
I have mined the fields of song
to forge a blade without peer,
bright and terrible,
with which to carve stars on the face of heaven,
a blade to wield among the sons of men
and spill the contents of their souls.
By fire and water, stone and steel, I ask the gift of poets:
the power to create,
the courage to destroy
Charles Charlton
Fall 1999
