I'm trying to write a poem right now. Or write anything I guess. And I can't seem to be able to get anything out that I'm able to like. So, I'm trying here. Obviously. I was reading all sorts of things for inspiration: Neruda, Siken, Salinger, whatever. But nothing seemed to work.
All my metaphors are cliche. A key in a lock. A beam of light. A song to be sung. Shut the fuck up.
I spoke with Mary and Delia tonight. I don't know how I feel about it. Then why am I writing about it? Jesus Christ.
Jesus the zombie. Zombie Jesus.
Tell me about the dream where you laid on a pike. Tell me about the dream where you were an apple on a tree, and I climbed the branches to find you among the leaves. Tell me about the dream where you laid on the floor and dug our fingers into the carpet, my burning knuckles singing choruses of pain and love and the excruciating ecstasy of knowing, in this moment, we are together.
Maybe it's okay to be a little cliche. Some people like that sort of thing, you know.
I hate those poems where it's just stating the obvious. Like, god, I don't know, saying how one feels in normal words just with line breaks. Poetry is about saying something in a way only you can say it. It's about saying something everyone knows in a way nobody has said it before. Or, it's about saying something only you know in concrete enough terms someone else can understand.
I used to think poetry was abstract because it draws connections between seeming disparate things. But, I learned in college that poetry is actually concrete because it makes palpable what is only known to the soul. The connections drawn are from the soul to the world, and that is not abstract, but divinely concrete. Or maybe it's both abstract and concrete at the same time. I suppose terminology can't matter more than the substance.
So, when I'm struggling, I go back to imagery. I think of what I can make concrete in terms of the senses. I make a list of objects for each sense and then try to weave them together. But, right now, the lists do not seem weaveable. They're not grass or paper or reed or whateverfucking else people weave okay?
Eating: Soil, not dirt, the soil with white particles they gave you in elementary school when we grew sunflowers in plastic boxes, or the kind my Nana got in bags from Lowe's to grow the flowers in her garden. Sure, soil = dirt = soil. But actually, they're different. Shoveling fistfuls in my mouth like maybe if I [cemetery].
Feeling: Carpet burn, or the feeling of the carpet under my feet when I walk back from the bathroom in the middle of the night. That's the opposite of carpet burn. The way my knuckles felt when I sandpapered them down raw in high school. The way my face burned red when my "friend" told everybody I did that in Geometry class.
Seeing: A tree illuminated from underneath, the glowing golden light pouring from the grandmother's mouth as she sings a song, her song, that she learned from the radio a long time ago. Like every word is a promise of "I'll be there tomorrow."
Hearing: The way an apple bruises when it hits the ground, or the crunch when it hits your teeth. Knowing what was will never be the same and there's nothing you or I or anybody can do about it. The sound of change inevitable, looming, promising, threatening, embracing.
Smelling: Do you smell the way a hummingbird drinks sugar water? Can you tie a rope around the flesh of God? When I drink the grape juice at communion (because I went to a Methodist church), I don't think about the way all those women hurt me. I just feel the sweetness.
