April: Poetry Month Post III - Music

So I figured I should end the month on a happier poem, nothing angsty here. If you've been following along with me then you know how much music helps me write, helps me change my mood, just helps me. So this is what that's about.

Music

I am as peaceful as a Hindu cow
until the moment that beat pulses the floor
and the words penetrate my ears,
I am empowered with
a rage and a fury
that only the wind knows the language of.
I am engulfed and filled to burst,
a drowning victim
no longer fighting the current of
the crushing oblivion.
I know nothing
outside of this perfect moment,
created just for me.

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April: Poetry Month Post II - Waking Sleep

Moving right along with the Official Poetry Month, I give you: Waking Sleep. I wrote this in 2008 in the middle of a serious, serious insomnia stretch. I hadn't slept more than a couple of hours in five or so days and during one of those sleepless nights, staring at the computer, I wrote this.

Waking Sleep

Never really asleep but not quite awake.
Drifting, sifting through the half-minded
hallucinations and real conversations.
I feel lost even though I haven't left the house.

2 hours here and 12 there, a math equation
that d o e s n o t add up and only equals
a hang over without the preceding fun.
I am cheated, suffering through the punishment
of a crime not committed.

The clock ticks away the p.m. threatening the a.m.
and I've stopped counting how many hours
I could get if I fell asleep in the next five minutes
because that was 59 minutes ago
and a decent night flew out the window
with the infomercial madness.

I cannot, cannot be awake
because, because I have yet to fall
asleep.

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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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