If This Is What It Takes (Revised) Poem by Margaret Alice Second

What It Takes

Imagination failed me,
staring at words without vision
without emotional meaning,
without music or rhythm or symbolism;
cannot meditate to transcend
or lift off into a parallel dimension,
my characters deserted the stage,
I seek them everywhere, looking
into the depths of my mind

Only me without a story,
without events in my head,
seeking redress in a colour palette;
finding nowhere to rest my lonely
spirit, my twin has the same problem -
I can hide sitting here stringing words
in translations but she has to keep going
as her employees fail to heed her peppery
tongue, and she’ s taking pills

I’m taking a different set
yet it is all the same thing in the end,
we struggle with easy tasks;
Wonderland Alice in mauve,
purple magenta & pink & the
Duchess in Snow-Queen blue
with silver glitter don’t feel healthy and bright;
is it a spiritual disturbance?

Maybe we were both meant to be
spiritualist mediums, heeding the voice
of departed spirits - since we never developed
this faculty we might be persecuted by
angry spirits who want to break through -
I am willing to tell you your fortune if this
is what it takes to feel better again….