Inspiration…
lacking.
And slacking on the list.
Hours turn to evenings with
nothing to show.
I know, I know –
I can do better than this.
(One breath,
one step,
one task
at a time.)
Just choose the words
and make them rhyme.
Take a moment
and let it grow,
let it live
and sing.
Just make something.
(Anything.
Yes, you can.)
Poems
Your Time Belongs to You (A Poem)
(…that I definitely didn’t write for myself, because I needed to hear it.)
Your time belongs to
only you.
So take it easy,
slow and steady,
and stop
and breathe
if you need to.
It’s okay to
just be
or to not
be okay.
The rest of the world –
it can wait.
To Begin (A Poem)
To begin
is to know
you might fail,
and to choose
to try
anyway.
There Is a Time (A Poem)
There is a time for
all things –
for grief,
love,
and change,
and for
the way forward.
There is space
enough
in this world to
feel,
to learn,
to see,
and to grow.
This, we know,
even in our worst moments,
and on our
saddest,
sweetest,
shortest,
longest days.
We don’t get to
choose
the minute
or the place,
but they belong to us.
We are
made
to live.
Liminal (A Poem)
A space apart,
the pause in a song –
We live in this moment,
this
gap
between breaths,
and walk in
the
stillness
between movements.
Somewhere between
a time and a turning,
fast-approaching
but
slow and unsteady,
we wait.
Two Inspiration Cuartetos
It’s time for another monthly poetry challenge from Rebecca over at Fake Flamenco! July’s challenge is to write a cuarteto about what inspires you to write. This one was a little tricky for me – I don’t focus on rhyming in my poetry, so it felt something like flexing a new muscle. I think I did okay, though. 😊
Raindrops pinging on the roof,
a cup of tea, and a cloudy day
make a happy writer, I would say.
And right here is the proof.
I like to write at night
when all is quiet and still,
to keep company with the moonlight
and share thoughts with just paper and quill.
I had a lot of fun with this one! If you want to participate, too, you’ve got until Sunday. I think you should! It’s always good to try new things, right?
When the Job’s Done (A Poem)
And when it’s over,
I’ll sleep.
I’ll sleep
the sleep of
the fighter
the maker,
and I’ll take my rest
with a side of
satisfaction,
thank you very much.
For such a hard week,
it’s gone fast,
almost done.
Ranking it from ten to one,
I’d say –
zero.
But I’m still here,
and soon enough,
the work goes on.
Hungry (A Poem)
Today, I woke up
(late, but)
hungry.
To eat, sure –
I’m always that kind of
hungry.
But also, to see –
to read,
to write,
to ponder,
to listen
and hear
and learn,
to know.
I am so
hungry,
in fact, that I think,
if I lived a thousand years,
and wandered
the whole world,
I would still
never be
full.
Reflections on an Accidental Week of Writing Poetry
I mentioned in Friday’s post that last week’s all-poetry theme wasn’t intentional. The fact of it is, even though I pretty regularly post poems here, I’m always sort of amazed that I’m writing them at all.
I’ve never considered myself to be much of a poet. In high school, I hated the lessons that involved writing poetry – not as much as anything to do with math, but a lot. In college, I stayed very (very) far away from any class that would have had me writing poems, a policy that kept me from getting a concentration in creative writing. And even as I started this blog, and my current creative writing journey, I remember thinking to myself: “Well, I can write anything but poetry.”
It’s all very strange, because I love poetry.
I love reading it, performing it, pondering it, memorizing my favorite poems and quoting them, usually in full and often at inopportune moments. And so I asked myself, over the weekend, why I’ve always had such a hard time with the idea of writing it. And I think the answer is really simple: I don’t feel like I’m good at it.
Rest assured, I don’t need validation or compliments here, though kind words are always appreciated. What I’m getting at is, I think, a larger issue in our culture, whereby we seem to be operating under the incredibly damaging and entirely false belief that if you’re not really good at something, there’s no reason for you to do it.
Not a great singer? No karaoke for you. Go sit in a corner and be embarrassed at your wobbly warble.
Not a good runner? Find another form of exercise. No running groups for you! You’ll slow everyone down.
Can’t draw? Get out of here, false Picasso. No room for your stick figures on this canvas.
And I’m sad to say that for the longest time, this is how I felt about poetry. It doesn’t come naturally to me, and I’ve read so much good stuff (hats off to you, poets of WordPress!), and so I fell into the trap. Why even spend my energy on it? No future for me in it, so it’s a waste of my time. I’ll never be great, so why do it at all?
Except, I was wrong. Of course I was wrong. And these last couple of years have been a journey of discovering just how wrong I was. Because the why has nothing to do with greatness, or compliments, or money. The why is so simple: I enjoy it.
I’ve found, as much to my surprise as anyone’s, that I actually, truly, completely enjoy writing poetry. It makes me happy. I love the rhythm of sound and silence, and the way the words dance when you get them just right.
For me, there’s joy in writing poetry, even bad poetry, and that’s enough.
And frankly, that’s enough for anything – drawing, singing, running, writing… You don’t have to be an expert, or a natural, or even any good, to enjoy something. And enjoying it is reason enough to do it. Life is just too short to live it without joy.
So here I am, a not-very-good poet, clacking away on my keyboard, enjoying myself and appreciating that poems exist in this universe and I can write them (sometimes badly). It’s taken me years to get here, but I can say confidently, in this moment, I write poetry.
A Naani Poem (or, A New Way to Say I Can’t Sleep)
Finishing out this week of poetry! (It wasn’t intentional. I guess I was just feeling poetic. Not mad about, it, though.) Here’s a naani poem for the June poetry challenge over at Fake Flamenco:
Staying up to greet the dawn,
to welcome the new day –
once a pleasure,
now a curse.
As with many of these challenges, I’ve never tried this poetry type before, and it was a lot of fun! I like learning different ways to put words together and create music out of sound and silence. 😊 If you want to give it a go, as well, I think you should!
It’s always good to try new things, right?
A Virginia Writer's Diary 