Free Will
A sniper’s bullet
is guided by a perfect aim
as it closes in on a life,
just as I near those many lives
I will quell.
I was once cold, tired, wet
and always hungry
very hungry.
My brains were in my eyes,
my eyes were my trigger,
and I was free.
These days I am pampered in a prison.
I could choose to keep flying,
to never return,
to fly at will again.
But I don’t.
Perched on the edge of new understanding,
I now kill on command
then wait for meat to be placed at my feet.
My drive has been redirected,
not diminished.
My life has been altered,
not made worse.
I am but the bullet,
no longer the sniper.
Another week, another poem; I am on a roll thanks to The Ink Well Community and this week's poetry challenge! I can't thank @raj808 enough for getting poetic blood pumping through my heart again.
So what to write for the prompt "freedom"? After a day of pondering this, I realized it was a perfect prompt for continuing a prior poem which I recently published to steem entitled Raptor. I hope you will go read that collection of four very short poems that precede and inform this one. I wrote those about ten years ago, thinking I would surely be back to finish them someday. Looks like today is that day. I would be honored if you would read them all.
I had to do quite a bit of research for this, just as I did hours and hours of research for each of the previous four. After watching a bunch of videos on falconry, I've chosen Understanding Falconry to include with this post. I highly recommend that you watch this video. Jemima Parry-Jones is both brilliant at falconry, and very funny!
Big News!
Introducing my very first published recording of myself. I channeled Janis Joplin to record this - this is my one and only take. My gratitude to @raj808 for helping me figure out how to get my voice onto Steem. It's a new era!
Thank you so very much for supporting my work here.
image source
You are indeed "on a roll" - thanks to The Ink Well Community, this week's poetry challenge and @raj808 - #TheBest!! - we're all better off now that you've got "poetic blood pumping through my heart again."
I love your eagle's eye POV here!!!
P.S. I spent most of the day working on a belated entry to Challenge #2, Bad Habits.
My apologies to all you creators I'm overlooking. And for what: I may yet abandon the tale.
You were so excited about it earlier today! I thought it was almost done.
I slept on it.
This morning, I realized it will never be "complete" or done.
I posted it anyway. As is.
I am the perfect bullet.
The freedom of the eagle, seeking and focusing perfect death.
Destruction in the cycle of life. Only to be renewed in the next cycle!
Hunter vs prey in the eternal interplay of equilibrium!
Listening to it performed made it so much more than the absolute of the written whole.
Poetry is expression perfected in expression!
I have nothing more to say about this poem.... sublime.
Thank you @owasco for going the extra mile!
I can not thank you enough for reawakening my poetic voice. And for your help. And for that amazing comment. And for The Ink Well. And and and...
Did you hear I changed one single word in the written version after I made the recording? "I am the bullet" became "I am but the bullet". I could go on forever making this kind of change. Deadlines are the cure for that.
My favorite part of poetry groups is reading my stuff out loud, so being able to do that here is fabulous.
You are so good at this! Such power in your poet ♡
Thanks! I work for hours and hours on a poem like this one. I started the instant the prompt was posted and didn't finish the poem until five days later. I write a few words, watch, research, ponder, write a few more words, until I have pages and pages of snippets. My working title for this was "I'm not stupid" which helped as a goal. Then I tidied up the bits into short stand alone poems. Lastly I put those in order, and tinkered some more for transitions. It's very mechanical, and now I have some of @raj808's literary explanations to employ more often because to be honest I didn't know I was employing so many of them until he pointed it out! I'm learning a lot here. What else is there to do? lol A free imaginative writing education on Steem, soon to be hive.
They are a lot of work! Hours of worrying nothing will ever come of all that, it's just a bunch of jibberish. But eventually the poem takes shape, and that's a major rush.
Thanks so much for your continued support! I haven't seen an entry from you. Gonna go look again and hope I find one.
"I am but the bullet,
no longer the sniper."
That was brilliant, no more aiming... just soaring towards the target.
$trdo
Why thank you! That line holds my overarching theme, so it's very cool that it strikes you as powerful. And thanks for the trdo!
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