Tired –
bone tired,
cell tired of seeing
the same scenes in all
directions, desperate for
new things to think, to feel,
to be –
not for
novelty’s
sake, but for
ways that work.
It always starts silent
in cold vast dark –
breathing four
degrees
above
zero:
the empty page,
the uncorrupted
canvas, the
peaceless
quiet, without
form and void.
(Something should fill it,
we think – the conceit
of all substantial
things … that
we should
be.)
Characters and
stories, we drag
ourselves violently
real because we matter.
The possibilities are intense,
the cost of a wrong choice
catastrophic; when
action is required,
it is required
blind.
Old king courage is a merry old soul
with pipe and bowl and his fine
fiddlers three; knife-sharp
night-stark strokes score
surface tension and
lend us solid lines.
Strange matter music severs
silence, destroys itself,
and fills the air
with fluid
cuts.
Disparate scenes are spliced
awkwardly together,
afraid of looking
amateur and
causing
harm.
The world has enough wounds.
Every time I read anything you write, I look at my own work and wonder how I’m getting real…with myself that is. I have spent so many years not writing, and giving every person in my life exactly what they want and need and as strange as this sounds I actually am a stranger to myself. I admit I probably scratch the surface of my ‘real’ self writing poetry, but there is still something not genuine about it all. God how do you get in touch with your own emotions, when you have detached yourself from them for so long? How do you finally get to that place where you are no longer performing? Sigh…Sorry to get so philosophical on you:)
You rather succintly describe my current ‘journey’. (I know how pretentious that sounds, but it’s the best I can do right now.)
I can very much identify with the details you share. In my life I have spent way too much time trying to please (sincerely). It isn’t so much about self-centeredness as an awareness that it turns into a lie – a lot of little lies that add up over time to losing the self.
Personally, I’ve found a couple of things that work for me. First is honestly owning feelings – if they’re good or even if they seem vile, they’re mine. There is a level of self-acceptance (nothing moral – just what is, is). Second, for me, the things that are true are genuine tend to be things that are consitent – they’ve always been there. It’s funny, anything I learn that strikes me as important or realization or revelatory, always has the character of remembering. It isn’t new – it’s just something I’ve forgotten. Third, again for me, I’m aware that the things that stirke closest to home are also the hardest things to explain. Poems are about finding a vocabulary for them. Even though I realize a lot of people may not recognize or ‘get it’, it is needful to give the benefit of the doubt or the chance. Just like, I find sometimes things other people write that (on paper) I shouldn’t get, really reach me.