The Cerebral Mum

The assignments I haven’t done from 30 poems in 30 days are just sitting there, clogging up my dashboard. I can’t write anything good. It feels like thinking. And I can’t think. So I’m just going to do them. Randomly. Whatever assignment I open, I’m cutting and pasting it in, then… Bang: A poem! In 30 seconds. I don’t even care how bad they are, or good. I just want my brain to start feeling fluid again. Instead of crushed.

So..

Bang! The 10th assignment: The good, the bad and the meter…

“Write a three or more stanza poem that uses a metered style for the first two stanzas and a non-metered format for the remaining stanzas.”

My head is just imploding,
I don’t know what I’m saying,
I’m sick of all this thinking,
There are no words left in me.

Numb and poetry is lost,
Blind and all my meaning gone,
Nights too short and days too long,
There are no words left in me.

I hate this.

I hate my stuck mind,
I hate my lost time,
and yesterday
and nothing.

There are no words left in me.

Bang! The 17th assignment: The constraint as a tool.

“Wikipedia’s Random Button is a great and magical thing. Today it lead me to an article about Cheshire Mammoth Cheese. The story of Cheshire Mammoth Cheese has everything you need for poetic inspiration. It has historical significance. It has political significance. It has small town appeal. It has people working together toward a common goaland it contains a pop culture reference. Most importantly, it has cheese. Find a way to incorporate this article into a poem.”

I’m not reading about the stupid cheese.
Seriously? Seriously?
(That’s a pop culture reference. )

I’ve heard the story before.
Cheese and politics
and highways for wolves
on The West Wing.
(That’s the pop culture reference.)

But politics isn’t like that,
It wasn’t like that then either.
Now, we talk faster.
We film it, dreaming they
Talk faster. And better.
Politics is pop culture.

Buffy likes cheese.
(That’s a pop culture reference.)

Bang! The 13th assignment: What is your writing process?

“Today is a two-part assignment. The first part is to think about your method of writing poetry… The second part is to shake up your process. If you have a lot of structure, try loosening up. If you write very loosely, try adding some structure to the process. Find a new place to write or use a different tool. The change doesn’t have to be major, but if you post your poem, please tell us what you changed.”

I normally don’t write poems
in 30 seconds bang.
I normally don’t write poetry at all.
I’m not a poet.

None of that’s true,
or it wasn’t once,
once-upon-a-time.

Then, I just wrote
and words were dark
and rich
and deep,
saturated with music
and sensation.

Redolent.

Now, nothing.

Bang! The 15th assignment: Imagism.

“Write a poem that follows the three rules of the imagists.

1. Direct treatment of the “thing”, whether subjective or objective.
2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome.”

Too rigid, imagism.
Too conscientiously flowing. Abrupt. Flowing.
The thing is not a thing.
It expands, contracts, unfolds. It has no substance.
I am not T.S Eliot,
The thing is words, stripped words, naked, undulating.
Shock me with it. Hurts like hills and dreams and loves,
like blood.
Flowing.
Gone.

Bang! The 14th assignment: Repetition

“Write a poem that uses at least two different forms of repetition. Try to embrace at least one form of repetition that you don’t ordinarily use. “

Repeat.
Repeat.
That’s all I do.

Fucking echoing, empty
chamber of my mind.

Repeat.
Repeat.

Dead nouns. Dead signs.
No metaphor,
no semaphore,
Just dot dot dot,
dash dash dash,
dot dot dot.

Repeat.

Bang! The sixth assignment: Developing your voice…

“Take at least five minutes to meditate in a quite room free of outside influences before you write today’s poem. Try to clear your head of stray thoughts. Once you feel like you are clear and calm, write your poem. Let the topic be about whatever comes to mind after your meditation. If you have never meditated before, simply sit in a chair with your eyes closed and try to relax.”

Yeah, right. That’s going to happen. I couldn’t do it then. And I sure as hell can’t now.

How long is a second,
how long a breath?
How many moments spent,
With glass grating
my screaming head?

How long is five minutes?
Is it tense or dead?
My only thought:
Too much. I’m going
to bed.

I really don’t. Or not this, anyway. I’ve had enough of myself. I’m living in a vacuum. Nothing challenges me. Nothing inspires me.

Hmm. Since writing the above, I have wasted two hours pfaffing around on Facebook, which I don’t even like. Procrastination. On that uplifting note, I’m going to bed. Numbness and sleep. Lipstick tomorrow.

xx

We have to be at the hospital again tomorrow. I am now beyond exhausted.

It is only 9:30 and I am fighting sleep and trying to write poetry while I have nothing to say, while I don’t even want to say it. I am angry at nothing, as though there were wasps inside me. I am grinding my teeth.

I hate these days that have passed, this week that didn’t exist. The phone calls that didn’t get made. The appoinments that didn’t get kept. The forms I didn’t fill out. The mail that didn’t get posted. That hovering sense I’ve forgotten something important, that everything is about to come crashing down.

My house of cards.

I want some space to clear my head and breathe and stop waiting. There won’t be time for that for a while.

At the moment I feel shattered. So I shall go to bed with a book I probably will not read and fall asleep while words swim abandoned on my pillow.

Oblivion until 6am, bundling baby into the car without his breakfast.

It’s too long since I’ve written. It was never this hard. It was never this hard knot in my chest that feels like tears. I’ve have too much to say. I have forgotten how to say it.

It was never this hard when I made myself jugs of coffee and brandy and typed through the night with the city lights creeping through my apartment, knowing all the while there were people still awake, still out in the streets, still living. It was never this hard when I was sitting in a corner of the Supper Club at 3am with my notebooks and a Pedro Ximénez, surrounded by people, alone but never lonely.

I hate living in the suburbs. When did I decide to stop being? I didn’t. It just came creeping and that’s far, far worse. It’s easy to live with the consequences of decision. You have answers to all your whys; you can respect your choices even when they’re wrong. But this creeping passivity, this loss of passion, this degrading slide into conformity…

I hate living in the suburbs. I hate this lack of will in me. I hate this non-entity I’m trapped inside. I hate being surrounded by clean concrete and new bricks and people who speak in nothings. I hate my hollow voice.

I guess there are things that have happened in my life, there are people, I could blame for where I am and I see the temptation but I refuse attribute my life to others. I refuse to abdicate. So instead, I don’t like myself. I am ashamed.

And after stating so categorically that I am a writer I cannot find words. There are times when reading breaks me down, breaks through that barrier freezing my fingers at the keyboard, but today was not one of them. Today, reading Girl’s Gone Child’s past and present futures, reading that she’s on the road again with a Kerouac quote in her pocket, I saw the sad echo of myself and had to face my stasis. Even her predilection for guitarists and Henry Miller was a mirror, an accusing reflection of who I am, or who I was, or that person I’ve failed by no longer being.

But the future is tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, and life doesn’t have to creep in this petty pace from day to day. Somewhere in me there is a breath. It is a hard knot in my chest that feels like tears and I will write it until I am no longer a walking shadow.