Poetry Wednesday - I Do Not Like the Fog

A foggy poem for a foggy day.

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Hello Red Cabbage Head readers,

I have been a tad under the weather AGAIN, yea I know, I’m always poorly, I’m always telling you, it’s boring, yahde yahde yahde yahda- let me tell you it is SO boring! I get you, I get it, but I’m not going to stop going on about it. Luckily all I’ve had is a bad cold, which as usual has settled onto my chest, but not badly enough to warrant antibiotics, so I just cough lots and get on with it.

I’ve been very lucky recently and had 4 more poems accepted for publishing, I am rather stoked. I’m trying to work out how many I need before I REALLY feel I can call myself just a poet and not a ‘late emerging poet’. As usual there has also been the slew of rejections. Though one that was picked up this time round was rejected by a different place. So it proves that poetry is subjective, it depends on the magazine and it’s style, whether I’ve interpreted the tone correctly (hard for an autist), whether my understanding of the theme is too literal or not literal enough, too long, too short, the right format etc. I read one submission brief that said they liked proper poetry forms like sonnets etc, and yet reading back issues it was all free form; I didn’t submit anything there as I was confused as to what I should do. I admit I rarely write a new poem for a non paying zine. I might rework a tiny bit, one recent submission I worked two poems together as it seemed to work better - an episcopal moment in reading those two poems again after a long while. I’ve a piece of work accepted I wrote last month and also one from 20 years ago that is finally seeing the light of day.

So my point is don’t give up. Give it a go if you fancy it but don’t take it to heart. One of the poems I’ve had chosen was one I threw in on the off chance cos it fitted the theme but I was fairly sure it wasn’t ‘good enough’ to be published anywhere, I was wrong, and looking at it with fresher eyes it’s not too bad actually.

So todays offering is this, it’s foggy outside, the cloud has descended into the valley and we are caught in blankness, and this blankness echoes quite nicely how it feels to have brain fog, a very significant part of my M.E.

The view from my bedroom window today, an encapsulated world

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I do not like the fog. 

I do not like the fog. 
When it descends everything is muffled 
I can not function when it falls, slowly, thickly
I cannot be. Cannot do. Cannot think.
Anything. I am blank. 
Like a vast clean sheet of paper
But unable to be written on.
I can not choose the right words anymore. 
I use words carelessly and they don’t work properly.
My meaning lost, missed, misunderstood. 
I mumble and murmur and stumble 
through the day, incoherent and boring.
My head throbs and I take a back seat to its chemical madness. 

I do not like the fog.
It makes me clumsy and unaware. 
I am not here, I am oblivious, I struggle to understand.
Time passes in snatches, moments last an hour
Hours last a second. I blink and the world has moved on fast.
All moves around me, without me,
Like a time lapse movie carefully constructed 
But of no real worth, to end up on the cutting room floor.
My snapshot images of the day rejected. 

I do not like the fog.
My brain fights it and that makes me so tired. 
I want to sleep, but when I do the fog thickens 
and it takes a long while on waking to shoo it away. 
I do not always have the energy, 
and then the fog entombs me all day, 
wrapped around me like a killing quilt 
and I struggle to function. 
I want to feel but I don’t know how. 
I want to converse but I don’t know how.
I want … I want …. more.

I do not like the fog. 

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That’s all folks, til next time.

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