Simpler Times

I wrote my first poem in 1984 or 1985. It wasn't a particularly great poem but it was, is a poem and does reflect genuine emotion. Since that time I've written about 60 or so poems give or take a few.

Poems for me are often hard to explain because of all of them, only very few were calculated, that is I sat down with the intent to write a poem and managed to complete the task. Most of the time, poems come from places that are often far deeper than I am capable of reaching by choice and are what I consider to be awakenings, sent to me from my subconscious stirrings.

Anyway, yesterday I indirectly accepted a challenge to write a poem every day in April, I didn't stop to think just how hard that would be because I am not nearly as prolific as my subconscious. I realized this today at lunch when I stopped to think what I should write a poem about today and came up with what I thought was an interesting idea but destroyed about a ream of scrap and it never happened.

I was ready to put an end to the misery and accept that this is no way to craft poetry. It is however a great writing exercise to keep the mind open and once I was ready to be done with it, the words SIMPLER TIMES just came to me. I wrote a verse, hated it, left it on my desk then made a PB&J, it was lunch time after all, and read some of my book. I went back to the desk about an hour later and saw the words SIMPLER TIMES again and it started to become clearer, not to me, but to what those words apparently meant to my inner self because I did end up writing a poem, actually a song, or part of one because the words didn't come alone, there was a definite melody as my subconscious sung them to me.

Simpler Times

It was a simpler time and place
 a softer, sweeter pace
It was sights and sounds and smells
up close and in your face

It was a world of make believe
okay to be naive
It was a dreamer's paradise
that you'd never want to leave

It was walking hand in hand
castles made of sand
It was riding waves of freedom
into the promised land

It was all those years ago
where time went, I'll never know
It was simpler times back then

Can it ever be...again?

by Chris Daniele  4/3/2008