Seven Poems

 

 

                            for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life

                                                                    ~Rainer Maria Rilke

 

 
     Oh craziness become me.  I feel like an abstract painting, perhaps a Picasso, struggling to pull my displaced parts together.  My writing is not going well but my writing is going well. 
     Something has stopped me in the writing of the book.  In the meantime, it's National Poetry Month and I've written seven poems, one for each day of the month thus far.  I've tweeted stanzas daily.  Like this (from a poem entitled "Selfie"):



I would cut one of those apples, slice it

Wide open before carving my ear

Off completely, just to tell you

I am here.

 

     Writing is my dream life.  And because it is the heart of me, my deepest desire manifest, it is making me crazy.  Following my passion, my bliss, my heart of hearts, has brought my deepest fears, inadequacies, and insecurities out of the closet. 

     I wake up from a dream, to a volcano within, find myself sobbing.

     "I am a failure.  I have always been a failure.  And now I will fail at writing," I say when my husband asks why am I crying? 

     Woah!  Where did THAT come from? I am grateful that Wayne is my best friend, that I can show myself so starkly and raw, that he can just sit there and hold me.

     Wherever it came from was dark and deep, at the very core of me and felt true, seemed so real.  It is not a belief I can brush aside, not my usual delusion. 

     For days, I puzzle over it, the dark ring of truth.  "I am a failure."

     I have failed at many things.  And, dear reader, I know, you have too.

     Synchronicity. A link to an Ann Pachett essay from her book "This Is The Story Of A Happy Marriage" appears on my news feed.  I read:

 "I believe, more than anything, that this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers.  Forgiveness, therefore, is key.  I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing.  Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself." 

     Thank you, Ann. 

     I may fail. No.  I will fail.  However, life has taught me that it is not the failure that matters.  What matters, is that I do it.  I show up.  I keep writing. 

     I keep writing. 

     I write.  I write against time.  I write against hope.  I can do this.