Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Another Night turns into Day (followed by an exposition on why we write)

(Warning: contains depressing material not suitable to all viewers. The clinically depressed may want to leave the room at this time, ie., hit the Back Button or, at the very least, put down the loaded pistol)

Now, sit back and enjoy the program.
~~~~~~~~~~~$€¥£•

Slowly, slowly, ever so slowly
The black of night turns into grey
And when the rooster calls it dawn
There isn't much anymore to say.
It is dawn. It is grey.

Black and darkness has been replaced by a sullen greyness.
It spills into this room full of windows
like chill water flowing into a capsizing kayak.
It's there, you can't live without it, but you certainly don't need it rushing in over the gunwales.

Where is the cheery dawn,
Of bright skies and singing birds?
There are no birds.
They didn't start their usual pre-dawn orchestrations.
Even they knew the day was sunk before it started;
Sunk like matter into a blackhole;
Sunk like the saber-toothed cat in a La Brea tar pit; (http://www.tarpits.org/)
Sunk like my heart & soul,
Lost in a sunless, friendless, loveless space I can't call home,
because home IS where your heart is.

And right now, I'm not even sure I have a heart left as I struggle with the La Brean tar pit minefields of these relationships.

Leave me to sink, to petrify,
So that future generations will ponder my fate.
Leave me -
- or, damn it all, reach out your arm and pull me out,
To safety,
To light,
To laughter,
And to love.

It is an awfully gray day.
Where is the sun?
Where
Are
You?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, I know that some of you worry that I am clinically depressed. That is not the case. I am situationally depressed, repressed, and . . . <damn, I needed one more "pressed" word to make my virtual point. I don't think it exists>

Anyway, we all swing from sad to glad in some sort of pendulum-like certainty. Naturally, some folks experience the sad-glad curve skewed to the left and seem happy all the time. Others experience a skewness to the right and seem to be down all the time. Still others exhibit that classic bell curve and are medium most of the time, with equal parts happy and sad experienced only on their two long tails.

And me, as a poet, can conjure up any spot on that curve and reflect it back to you in words that emote that condition in your own heart & soul. That doesn't make me that person, that experience, that emotion. It is but a painting with words designed to bring forth a plethora of feeling to you, to hopefully hit a heartstring (NOT scientifically proven to exist).

So, know that there is a part of me in everything I create, but know also that I am not my creations in mood or measure.

We write to share a picture with you, fanciful, terrifying, illuminating, sensual, dark.

We write because we must write.
Casting off the feelings and fears that we perceive, we become more you and you more us.

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