“Oh fire, the forests yield to your rage and rosebuds bow as if standing in collective sorrow for the loss of their fallen friends.”

Crap!

Jasper highlighted the sentence and hit delete.

Poetry! Gah!

He enrolled in the writing class to learn more about writing – stories, articles, insightful revelations, hell…he’d even settle for some snappy greeting card prose, but his teacher – Ed Fowler – was a poet, or so he told them. Being a poet, Ed Fowler taught what he knew…poetry. And Jasper found over the weeks of the course that his brain must be impenetrable when it comes to poetry.

Lyrical word play, blank verse, free verse all seemed counter to his notion of deeper self expression. Each week he drew out one agonizing word after another, hoping that Ed Fowler would at least dub his latest collection of words a real poem, an honor that had thus far escaped him.

It didn’t help that the voice in his head as he reviewed his work sounded very much like James Earl Jones. Even that made him a little sad for he was certain the real James Earl Jones could read the ingredients off a box of cereal and make it sound poetic.