Uncollected Poems

At the bookstore I noticed a book 

that was titled "Uncollected Poems"

which struck me as quite absurd.

 

A book filled with uncollected poems

should by its very nature not exist. 

Such a book is simply impossible.

 

Certainly a more appropriate title

is in order. Something more like

"These Used to be Uncollected Poems, 

 

But Not Anymore." However I

realized this would lack a certain flare

needed to entice a reader to pick it up.

 

So perhaps a title that would lend it

a sense of danger would help. "Wild Poems:

Captured and Caged for Your Reading

 

Pleasure." Yet this did not sit well either.

It seems to add an air of emasculation,

as if the words now confined between

 

the flaps of this book were somehow

subdued and had been stripped of their

full potential, robbed of the totality

 

of meaning that they once possessed.

It suddenly became plainly obvious

that simply renaming the title could

 

never change the true nature of the

poems contained within this book. It 

was with this in mind that I decided

 

uncollected poems should remain the

wonderful and wild creations that they were

intended to be. So I bought this book

 

of once uncollected poems now collected

and rushed outside, tearing each page from

the unjust confines of its flapped restraints.

 

I sent them, one by one, into the breeze

that gladly accepted and scattered them

like seeds of resistance and liberation.

 

As each poem was lifted from my fingertips

and took flight from their imprisonment,

all I could do was scream, "Be Free! Be Free!

 

Be uncollected!" 

 

 

 
"Uncollectd Poems" by BK Stephens is licensed under a CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION-NONCOMMERCIAL-SHARE ALIKE 3.0 UNITED STATES LICENSE.