April: Poetry Month Post I - Catharsis

Apparently April is official Poetry Month (I had no idea!). So, in honor of that I'm going to post some of my old poetry. I know, a writer who used to write poetry? You don't say! Anyway, I'm one week behind, but for the remaining weeks in April I'll post a poem each week.

This week: Catharsis - a writing exercise
I wrote this way back in 2003 for my college poetry class. I had been having a very difficult time writing anything creative and was even considering changing my major so my Professor told me to just start writing down reasons why I write/wrote and then this happened.

Why do we write, we bleeders of ink, we scribes of secrets?
Catharsis.
Cop-out.
Escape.

Release.
Release.
Release.

I write to dance on paper.
Swing my hips round with paradox,
tap-dance across the keys into fanciful rounds of puns,
and spin out into metaphor.

This is how I move,
sometimes slow, painful and forceful.
Stone by stone I dig my way through the wall
until I come tumbling free.
Others smooth and gliding, fast, sharp and direct.
Crashing through.

I write to remember dragons
streaking across the full mooned sky.
Fairies curl my hair and I cannot forget them,
to be a child catching butterflies,
I want to remember.

I write to inspire my sister.
Out of pride of her first poems,
so sad,
laden with questions
I thought her too young to think.
Force the children to write
and one day they will have something to remember.
Remember,
always remember.

In my way I am immortal
so long as the edges only yellow and curl
but never burn.

To remember my sisters who have burned.
I write for all the little girls who always wanted to,
but couldn't.
Can't, won't, shouldn't.
I will.

I write to remind myself that all embers
eventually die out
and I must learn from the Phoenix
because he is the only one who has risen.
Rise my children, rise.

I write to remember young conversations over cappuccinos,
smoking smelly French cigarettes,
pretending to be Sartre.

I write to make poets out of the ordinary,
to make them extra-ordinary.

I write out of conviction,
because even I have something important to say,
even if I am the only one who cares to hear it.

I write because I do not drink.
This is my low.
I write because I do not trip.
This is my high.

I want to forget grudges,
to forgive trespasses and move on.
Move on.
Move on.

I write so that I can sleep.
I write because I no longer dream
unless
the fantasies drip from my fingertips into ink.
Chase the characters around just fast enough
to keep up and hear them speak.

I write to say things I cannot alloud for fear
of crucifixion of your judgments and looks.
The look of a raised brow.
Write to raise that brow.
To cause question and argument.

Speak.
Speak loud.
Always speak.

So that I can sit still.
To find a way.
Every one has a path but they must first find their way.

I write because I do not know how not to.
A narrator lives in my mind and she screams to speak.
Freedom,
I am human,
I must have Freedom.

I write my way up the mountain
until I can climb no more
and I look out over the horizon to I find my way home,
crashing through the barrier lines
and find my way past criticism and offenses
and remember my voice is loud and great.

A beautiful creature
and if I keep writing I will find my way out
of my self-made mazes and come home.
So that I can come home.

I write because when I look into the abyss of a blank page
I realize what God must have felt like on the first day
and want to know what he felt on the seventh.


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