Poetry Wednesday - Some Days I Don’t Want to Be a Poet
Oh, those pesky wiggly words disrupting my day!
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Good day Red Cabbage Heads,
It may come as a surprise to you but there are days when I’m not sure I want to be a poet. Sometimes there are even a lot of those days. There are many times when I read others poems and bemoan my lack of skill and it makes me want to stop trying at all (being honest there are times I read others poems and either don’t understand them, don’t like them, or think I could do better). I don’t understand the publishing world, and yet I’ve now managed 10 poems published so I must be doing something right. I’ve managed to sort out a 60 poems poetry collection on a specific theme on a very short deadline, and a chapbook ready for rejection, I hadn’t a clue how to do either of these things so winged it (as my airforce husband would say), whether they fly or not is a matter for others to decide, but I very much expect them to be grounded (just being realistic here). There are times when I want to write long form and fear I’ve forgotten how. There are times I need that 3rd stanza to finish up and it just won’t come and I feel the last few hours work is pointless, and there are times when a poem drips off the pen (or types off my fingers) with ease and I feel as more a medium for the words rather than an author in my own right.
You see, I have a large craft cupboard absolutely stuffed with all sorts of crafts I’d like to continue and pursue. I just about get away with knitting as I don’t need to set up for it, I can knit in situ on the sofa with my notebook by my side should the muse manage to push through the brain fog and make herself heard. Knitting, like crochet, is muscle memory, there is little deep thinking about following someone else’s instructions, even if the results are interestingly, often hilariously, whimsical.
It would be wonderful to view the world and just be, without having ideas pounce on me. 1am ideas are the best and the worst, depending on whether I remember to write them down. Many are marvellous but I don’t remember them when I re-awake in the morning light. And I treasure my sleep, waking with guilt at forgotten words is not the best way to start the day. Rummaging around in my brain library just causes chaos and a mess that needs tidying up later.
And of course when I want them or am meant to be using them for courses or prompts (like now) etc those ideas run and hide away, or worse make me write something else. So here is a poem, written on a whim, when I should be doing something else, as usual it’s not perfect the words have scarpered again having achieved their aim of disrupting me from other things. But hey, I got a post and a poem out of it!
some days I don’t want to be a poet
some days I want the words to leave
me in peace and go bug someone else,
I can’t be the only one who will listen!
some days I feel their bony scratch in
my head as intensely annoying
interrupting at decidedly inconvenient
or even inappropriate moments!
some days I open my craft cupboard
doors and gaze in with huge want
eyes lingering on watercolour
pans and soft sable brushes
fingers running over specialist paper
relishing the texture, the thickness,
the blank and creamy lack of words
most days there is no way I could paint
today there is no way I can paint
yesterday - no way could I paint
held hostage by the words that
puncture my senses with urgency
overriding my different desires
their need for release immediate
some days they start a thought and
then leave me for days, hanging,
unable to start anything new, selfishly
fickle on a whim of their making
most days the words continue their
infuriating scratch until my aching brain
is sore and I am forced to write and
rewrite, write and rewrite, write and
rewrite until they are satisfied and sated
most days they don’t make it easy,
their insistence turning to stabbing
ire when I am not good enough, fast
enough, my snippet littered notes
paying testament to poems unfinished,
a waiting room for words long moved on.
some days I don’t want to be a poet
So that’s all folks, ta-ra for now- I’m off to try to do the things I was meant to do before these words interrupted. Txx
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I like “bony scratch” and “blank and creamy lack of words”.
And this feel so true:
“some days they start a thought and
then leave me for days, hanging,
unable to start anything new, selfishly
fickle on a whim of their making “
The personification of the words themselves is playful and somehow intensifies the impact of the feelings of frustration.
And I definitely feel the longing for watercolor.
Altogether a lovely poem.
I feel this. There are days when I can't force it, and thankfully, I have enough wisdom to realize to let it go, and find something else to do. I always say this about my attempts at poetry "I'm not a poet and I know it." I call them "poe-umms" just because I want to reassure the readers that I am not a poet. I write them because they come into being along with all the other creative stuff I do. I write novels, literary doorstops about the human condition. I paint, draw, I do photography, make the occasional plush toys or repair ones that I've rescued... I enjoyed seeing your cupboard full of cool stuff to play with, it looks so fun in there! I have bins, boxes, jars, taborets, solander boxes, and shelves full of the various things I love to use to make whatever I want to make (I think I have a lifetime supply of paper as I am a paper hoarder.) I maintain flat storage of everything I've made, (a lifetime of art making and writing.) There are times I ask myself, what's the point of doing all of this? No one wants to buy it. (I'm currently not exhibiting anywhere, and when I did, not much sold to make it worth my while playing "art taxi" all over the region hoping to sell something in a local library or art center exhibition.) No museum will want it (even tho' it's all very organized and properly stored and documented, as a former registrar of an art collection, I know what a hassle it is to receive a donation with no documentation.) I'll never be famous and I'm okay with that. I do it for myself. I love what I do and wouldn't want to do anything else. The words come and I write them down, if I don't write them down when I'm hearing them in my head, they're gone. That's okay. The creative life is not for the faint of heart, but it fills the heart with bliss. We love what we do, don't we?