Of Writing, Poetry, Mostly

Writing – poetry, mostly – is like I become Humpty-Dumpty. Who must fall down.

And break apart. Revealing all the messy innards – the mucous of the mind, the

gelatinous soul, the yellow yolk of the heart – all lying there spattered on

the street, for people to stare at, examine, trample over. Should Humpty-

Dumpty then be put back together again? Or just let herself be dried out by

the sun, or, as more likely, licked up by some passing hungry canine.

Writing also feels like I become the clumsy cow that dares to leap over the

beauteous moon – so high up and remote in the dark sky. Where the stars gather

around her and worship her. What am I, I sometimes wonder, a graceless bovine,

who really ought to be loitering about in some deadbeat brown field, chewing

cud, doing in this rarefied realm? Should the moon protest then, for having

this ungainly cow, its smelly udders brushing against her fair face, jumping

over her?

Is creativity the mind bubbling over? Or am I just a bumbling charlatan using

it for cover? Why am I obsessed with this world of words words words? And what

if these words dry up? As they must do, sometime. What when words

abandon me?

What do you want to write today? The monitor questions with a blank face

everyday. And, unable to bear its smug blankness, I plunge in, my fingers

feverishly pounding the keyboard, like an engine pulling its long train

through the night, blowing its lonely whistle. The tracks glinting dimly ahead

– disappearing into nothingness. How much more of the track is left? What is

my destination? What will I find at the end of the journey? A station called

Satisfaction? Fulfillment? Achievement? Or just a plain wooden sign which says

– STOP – This Is The End – There is no more track ahead.

What is it that I want to say? And to whom? Am I talking to myself? Am I

sleepwalking myself over an edge? Am I rolling around in my own muck watching

myself squirm? Like a worm swallowing soil as it burrows in deeper and deeper

into the earth. How deep will it burrow in? And how much earth will it swallow

before the earth runs out? And it emerges from the other side. What is on the

other side? Blank space?

"One dark night
Fired with love’s urgent longings
--- Ah, the sheer grace!
I went out unseen,
My house being now all stilled." - St John Of The Cross

-by Rita Putatunda