“You have to approach writing like sex: It’s supposed to be enjoyable, not stressful. If you’re trying too hard, everything will turn out awful and your partner ( the reader) won’t be satisfied.”
Mark Zacchio
How daily prompts annoy!
Poetry, should appear magically:
Like twilight’s fragmented memory,
Or, catnaps in October sun’s luminosity.
Ah! ‘Tis a writer’s block, I have no clarity.
***
The pen poised on paper
Leaves no words,
Only an irreparable stain.
The blank sheet ruefully
Smiles, nudging me to write.
***
But, I’m alarmed at the vastness
of space to be filled.
Words spill out.
Is it the muse,
or my mind at play?
***
Ink stains; and gashes glare,
Wounding words already penned.
Unborn words freeze.
***
The blankness that
I have slowly filled,
Mirrors chaos.
***
Thoughts hover and swoop.
My mind continues to churn.
Creativity has no Midas Touch.
***
Oh Hell!
Where’s the magical nugget,
The poetic particle?
***
Is it in the gamut of
Exhausted emotions,
Evoked by lurking suspicion
And petty jealousies?
***
Is it in verbal foliage?
Metaphors awkwardly strung together,
Like the shades of feuille morte leaves
Curled crisp in October?
***
Is it in the fleeting thought,
Elusive as chimerical light,
Passing through autumnal trees:
Or, Fall’s fast decaying leaves?
***
Is it in the nostalgic
Amber- rustic fragrances spilling out
Of crystal jars and phials-
the mystique of feminine perfumeries?
***
My thoughts curl up
Lazily, Do most poets
Undergo this degree of torpidity?
I swoon losing out to
Hades’ Oblivion and drugg’d syncope.
***
I scan the dreaded page
Suddenly, I’m beyond all physicalities.
Space and time
Converge, in euphoria,
And poetic ecstasy!
*********
Mumtaz N K
03-10-2020
P.S.
This poem describes the poetic process, the wavering monkey mind and creativity. It is a journal, hence it is likely to be scratched and cut many times until the poet arrives at the end product in elation.
feuille morte: autmunal shades, crimson, carmine, russet, amber, gamboge aurburn etc.
Syncope: faintness can be induced by drugs
PC: Houghton Library, The Harvard Keats Collection.
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