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Have you ever noticed how much mundane chatter you have blitzing through your mind in a day?

Snippets of conversation from passers by, that infuriating one-sided dialogue from mobile phone junkies, the ever present jingle, jangle, jumble of inane advertising in all its incantations and the searing confusion that emerges from a myriad radios, tv's and ghetto blasters.

No wonder the walkman and now the i-pod have created such a revolution in personal listening behaviour. How much more preferable it is to choose the sonic space we inhabit, blanking out the audible spam of an increasingly alien world.

But how do you deal with this ever present assault once the earphones come out? How long can you stay cool, calm and collected before you start looking for an opportunity to push them back in for a quick fix of Vivaldi, Elvis, 50 Cents or whoever or whatever does the business for you?

The fact is that unless you've perfected the art of TM, Silva Mind Control, or something similar, getting through the day (and the night) in today's multimedia world can be a seriously stressful business.

Sometimes, somehow you just have to get outside it all and switch off. A quiet walk through some undisturbed place in nature can work wonders, but this is not accessible to all of us all the time.

And let's not forget those endlessly repeated fragments and phrases of inner dialogue that keep us awake at night, or worry the hell out of us as we emerge from what little sleep we are able to get.

You know the sort of thing; Why am I always screwing up in this area of my life, what is it about me that makes others hate me so, I'm just not good enough, how ever will I handle this imminent disaster?

We are all prone to fall prey to this kind of negative self-talk when life deals us a tricky hand and even the positive thinkers among us secretly admit that amidst the carefully scripted affirmations designed to give the mind a positive perspective to dwell on, there is invariably some crafty little devil with a megaphone attempting to gatecrash our inner peace.

So what's the solution? Is there one?

I think there is.

Poetry..

Poetry? I hear you cry. Poetry! Come on, that may be OK for those arty farty, intellectual misfits, who look down their noses at mere mortals trying to eke out an honest living to get everything in good enough shape to sleep nights. Poetry might work for the off the wall, strung out weird and wild among us, but Joe Public trying to make good in an increasingly unstable world? I don't think so.

And you know what? I don't blame you. Six months ago I'd have given it the thumbs down too. So what's changed?

Although I was pretty keen on poetry as a kid, I really lost my feel for it once I hit my twenties. For thirty years or so, it never figured in my life at all. Until a few months ago, that is.

I'll spare you the details, but let's just say times were rough and one dark and lonely night I stumbled across a book of verse and read it through. What it taught me was that poems speak to us from a deep place we tend to find when there's nowhere else to go. They seem to provide us with verbal impressions that sometimes echo what is in our own hearts and minds, providing some kind of inner map through the uncharted regions of the soul. They can be a place of sanctuary where they gather like old friends reunited. They can be fun and funny lifting our moods, or deeply introspective, hauling us through a hallway of mirrors of every shape and size.

What is constant about them is the way poems focus the mind and link it to the heart. They seem to speak with a deeper voice ' a voice that maybe belongs to part of ourselves that some the higher self, or super mind.

Their true value lies in the place they take you to beyond the words themselves. Not necessarily more positive, or negative, just deeper and truer. So, next time you need to get away from it all, don't reach for the i-pod straight away. Try dipping into some verse, or better yet, jot down a few lines yourself. http://www.funnypoem.net