Sometimes I wonder if all of my creativity, or at least my talent to put it to good use, ran out in 1998 or thereabouts. Reading over some of the poems I’ve written recently (by which I mean that I recently read them, not that I recently wrote them), and I can’t help but feel that with rare exception the best stuff was written more than five freakin’ years ago. I’ve barely touched Grass Monkey stories for almost three years.
I can’t help but wonder what bloody happened to me.
I noticed that, also with rare exception, my “best” poetry seems to have some sort of recurring theme of self-inflicted sadness or depression, or attempted redemption from such (man, do I love meridian of day and Something Broken). Funnily enough, some of the most unbelievably stupid junk I’ve ever written falls under this same heading (see, for example, Inner Betrayal or A Lesson To Be Learned). Anyway, a few nights ago I was feeling distressed about something or other and so I sat down to try to put my thoughts into words. Guess what came out? This crap:
forgive
forget
their meanings are shrouded in shadow
how am I ever supposed to find releaseno escape from nightmares save in slumber
only find respite in darkness and solitude
all the tears robbed from my heart
stolen in a sporadically sub-par enigmatic battle
alone
I weep because I cannot weepsieve
fisherman’s net
they catch all the lumps of emptiness
all that slips through my weaving is peaceoutside disfigured from inside
the darkness claws and gasps for a breath of air
struggle affords me no victory
I surrendered freely too long ago
disowned
a disparate legacy lies at my feet
Seriously, a “sub-par enigmatic battle”? I don’t even know what the blazes that’s supposed to mean. Crivens, I don’t even know why I just typed “what the blazes.”
So there’s some ranting for the .42 readers of the grassmonk blog. Enjoy.