words – Page 7 – three good words

February 2, 2015

:blank:

grasping, grasping
but there’s nothing
not even thin air

you can write about thin air
high up in the himalayas
the crisp cold shackling all
the masks needed
simply to survive
to where earth touches sky
so no, not even thin air
not that at all.

nothing, really
emptiness
words, words
where are the words
that form, congeal
to one sentence
one phrase
that one moment
vowel, consonant
that opens doors
to new spaces
new ways
to live, be, see, perceive…

but what are lists to this
out and out grey
where silence doesn’t live
but holds all reigns
to sensation, reason…

though it may be
just a matter of timidity,
the smaller brother to that
icy little feeling, cowardice

for how spell out everything
and break through that wall
that holds everything in,
that hesitates, just when
the words want to be written

no, it won’t do at all.

January 10, 2015January 10, 2015

arrival

light spilling
onto an improvised desk
glowing, dimming
like beams, streaming
lighthouse-bright
turning, spinning
slow with flashes
warning, beckoning
the tired ship
braving the sea.

to land safely
at dock and shore
is the finished script
of sentence-senses written
composed, structured
compr(om)ised to a
comprehensible whole
the passengers
crowded, waiting

words delivered
past the storms of doubt
now anchored at the docks
of paper, screens
safe havens
from darkness, white

inky bows tumbling down
gangways, printed
into the open arms
of readers
embracing, holding, kissing
the whole crowd
with joyous glee

and solemn satisfaction
that all are present
ready to be read
entirely
safe and whole
on the page, written
free.

November 13, 2014November 19, 2014

blind walls

…what do you want to
write about
fight about
in the cave of your mind

where blind walls of irrelevance
rise high, so high

where the mystery
of abstraction
lies in wait to catch you out
trip you up

just when you thought you had it
by using the whole alphabet
of thoughts, words, music, feeling
unsaid, unspoken

stretching out like hills rolling
landscapes wide
a whole geography of me to you to me
and everyone else in between

populating the presence
of so many memories
hanging like tapestries
in wide open halls

where in the heat of before
what is known
is quietly sung at night
in that small corner

that hidden place
where you sit and play
on heart strings, melodious

in that rhythm and space
where a look, a glance
long past

are still warm to the touch
of the quintessential
the almost holy
from me to you to me
once more

July 28, 2014February 11, 2015

don’t listen

A blank page can be an awful thing. It seems empty, but it isn’t. It’s filled with possibilities, words written, deleted, rewritten, crossed out, thought over, emphasised, loved, hated, wanted, reviled – and it never ends either.

I think the hardest part is to not listen. You know, those ‘Are you serious’ ‘Are you sure about this?’ ‘Is that good enough?’ and ‘Is that it?’ that whisper from the blankness of the page, sounding out the words in your head. And then it happens, the whispers grow louder and louder, talk, yell, shout and scream and suddenly you’re saying: ‘No no no no no no no no!’ It’s wrong! bad! awful! horrible! blergh!

Delete. Delete. Delete.

And then you’re back to square one, that blank page, that empty space that somehow is already filled with all the things you don’t want to say, all the things you wish to convey, and really need to get on the page. And the whispers just won’t go away.

So many times, too many times, listening has made me do something stupid – that is, I deleted everything in sudden horrified shame, which also meant all the words were gone, never to be retrieved, never to be seen again.

I stopped that.

I keep everything that makes me hesitate, sometimes even squirm, even the silliest scraps of words on paper. I keep them for one reason: between those words, hidden among the letters, there is usually something real, a thought, a word, a memory that I can use later when I know what it is that I’m after. It’s not always like that. Sometimes what I wrote is just really, really bad.

It’s sieving through the whispers and finding my inner compass that’s so difficult. The whispers like to override that gut-feeling that 9 times out of 10 is accurate, and even the tenth time it was right somehow. The whispers that seem to come out of the emptiness, they can get too loud, and the trick is not easy but possible: just don’t listen. Write it down. Write it all down. Even that sentence you know is silly. Even that word you just don’t want to use. Write it down. See it written out so that you know why it’s so horrible. It’s helped me countless times. In a way, when I see it written out, I finally know what’s so wrong with it. Until then it’s just words swirling in my head.

Then I let it rest for a while. Sometimes for a few days, sometimes a few weeks, it can go into months and years actually, but eventually I go back, and read everything one more time. It surprises me time and again how different the words look and sound just becomes some time passed. If I’m happy with it, I edit what needs editing, re-write, re-draft and re-do until it’s roughly where I wanted to be. Then I start over until I finally feel ‘Yeah… that’s about right.’ This takes time of course, and it can be (very) frustrating, but what really helps me is reading the books, poems and short stories I love best. They’re the proof that someone successfully managed to silence the whispers coming out of the (apparent) emptiness.

At one point I had something of a database of crap sentences, horrible plot twists, stupid little dialogues I wanted to turn into genuine conversations and failed, failed, failed. I keep them though, and go back to them when I can overcome the inner cringe, and sometimes – I can’t tell you how or why, there is a mystery to this craft of ours – I find that seed of thought, of feeling that I was aiming for and work from there.