Free to feel the poem.

I've been working on some poems, as well as looking back over older ones, and I'm noticing a trend. I try to maintain structure and control in my poetry. I'm never quite sure how to, but I try all the same. In my oldest works, I did my best to maintain a rhyming scheme and a rhythmic scheme. Or at least I'd attempt to have the same number of beats per line, while using a rhyming scheme. I was trying to be creative and express myself, but I was also confined by structure and rules. I needed to control where the poem was going and how. And so, much of my earlier works feel somewhat forced and artificial. There came a time when I couldn't open myself up enough to write any poetry, and so I didn't. For almost two years. Now I'm back to it, and though I'm freer, I'm still constrained by the need for some kind of structure and control. I realized that as I responded to my thoughts and wrote them down that I had abandoned the whole rhyming bit. I kindof miss that and the charm I think it can lend a poem, but I'm no longer restricted by the need for it. At the same time, I find that I'm still limited by the need to stick with a particular theme, and to still maintain some structure. In a sense, I suppose you could say that I still think my poetry, rather than feel it. I would like to get to the point where I can just feel the poem and be the poem. And then someday, if I can do that and still rhyme or structure it in some way, that would be amazing. But that would no longer be a restriction for me, but rather, an enhancer. First, though, I need to learn to be free to feel the poem.