I have a little note pad, new, with polka dots.
Teal green with border shiny gold and golden spots.
And since I’m one who writes to live and lives to write,
As soon as I beheld it, ’twas love at first sight.
There’s something mystical about a virgin page.
And notebooks filled with pages pure my soul engage.
It’s calling me, this tablet with gold polka dots.
But subject matter — what to write — I know not what.
Frustratedly, I sit here, holding pen in hand,
Seeking words to start a poem — something grand.
This primal urge to slather ink across the page
Is in control ’til its demands I can assuage.
It could take hours, or even days, but what care I?
So many times I’ve let whole days go drifting by,
Until my muse and I fin’ly came into sync,
And thus inspired, I filled each pristine page with ink.
POETRY BY AHYOKA 
This poem struck a special cord in my heart. It carried me back to a my seventh grade English class. I was fresh out of grade school, and feeling ‘all grown up.’ I had an urge even then to write, and ideas raced through my mind. We were not long removed from WWII at the time, and I was still caught up in the romance of battles in the skies. Little boys have no inkling of the misery and horror of war… to me it was all glory and adventure, like the propaganda newsreels of that day. We had no understanding of the freezing blast of air through a bomber at 30,000 feet, or the burden of wearing bulky heated suits and heavy flak jackets. We’d never heard the deafening noise of war. We had no experience of seeing our own plane afire, not knowing if the next second would be our last.
I had an idea for a story. The name would be ‘THE LAST ONE HOME.’ It was about the tail gunner of a B-17 bomber. In my story, war had been an all-encompassing, well… thrill for him! It had been as if it were one big duck hunt, but the ducks he killed were German fighters… the enemy. And now, they were on their last mission – this was it. Within days, they’d be returning home. The duck hunt was over.
My story would be this man’s inner battle, an all new war that began afresh in his heart and in his mind.
I remember having those thoughts in my thirteen year old brain that day, as I stared at a blank sheet of paper before me. And I had the warm and wonderful thought that here before me lay the next great ‘american novel’… at least there lay before me the possibility of it! It was all up to me. Oh what an opportunity! Oh what a challenge!
As writers, we have a responsibility to the blank page… to do our best! We must never fear the blank page. The blank page is our friend. The blank page welcomes us with open arms. We can tell it our deepest thoughts… because it always understands.
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If I’m not writing on a computer, I’m writing on one of those little yellow pads that look like a yellow legal pad. They come in a package of 8 or ten or ? and I have quite a few of them with SOMETHING written on them. 🙂
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Yes, I have soooooooo many tablets — and envelopes — and napkins — with revelations from Scripture and even whole Bible lessons written on them. Sometimes I wonder if one of the requirements to qualify as a ‘real’ Bible teacher is being able to write a whole Bible lesson on the back of anything. 🙂
I’m running way behind on reading very much of your material — and Dennis O’Brien’s as well — and everyone else’s as well. My life is so packed with trying to do three jobs and the ministry that I barely manage to post something on a couple of my sites each week. But I really do have your things at the top of my list of “To Read” material, and I’ll get there sooner or later.
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