I started writing this post and it turned into a poem. (Another finding of thinking about writer’s block. Do the thing that works! Fighting with myself is boring.)
I.
Long-term projects suffer from being long-term.
And so, when I dropped time to the gods of other things,
I came back the not-me.
(Who wrote these strange words?)
For each ticking was gone,
the more breath I have to push
to an inert block,
panning for anything to gild,
and brittled things to bury
with sadly marked up stones
(and dig them up again)
until gravity ages me miles
from these shallows
or the river doubles back.
II.
I learned that lesson (and got bored).
I listened for something new (don’t you?)
The wail of an almost finished is a hideous sound.
And that beautiful something new,
it just perched on a branch
in the pane above my sadly diminished.
And my didn’t want to anymores (completely independent of me)
crawled out the window and slipped from the ledge
into another thorny thicket, escaping
(of course) pierced me illegible scars.
And my penance self sits,
speckled dancing arms,
transcribing them later,
(here I go)
a fool on another errand.
III.
Oops that’s not what I thought it was
and not where I thought I was writing.
A world of madness and just mad
The outside you’s broke a drawing hand
a laxity of agency,
tendons sprained from latency,
moral injury and fading
spirits. This is not what we do.
Is it?
(And here’s some violets)
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