“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” ~ Ray Bradbury, from Zen in the Art of Writing

“The Sitting Room” (nd, oil on canvas)
by Anne Redpath

                   

I so wanted to write today, could feel the need in my bones, yet when I sat down at the keyboard, there was nothing, so I found myself playing spider solitaire and finding other ways to spend my time. This wall is killing my spirit. And then I came across this poem on my tumblr dash, and decided to post it because it really speaks to my current inability to write. I just cannot seem to find the words, to arrange the words, to make any kind of meaningful link with the words . . .

havoc

For months, I couldn’t write. It was the loveliest vertigo, sort of like drinking tequila but without the hysterical blindness. My blackbirds were wingless, legless. They sputtered on the ground like firecrackers while you played flare gun, fire engine. I smelled like grass and rabbits, waited in the field for days for lightning, wanted that spark, the mailbox sticky with wasps. I could say I wanted order, all my ducks lined up like a carnival, playing hide and seek, patty cake, with the wedding rings. Shiny, sharp toothed and singing. But I meant I wanted us strung together like lanterns. A sort of morse code in my molars. Once for no, twice for yes. Meant I wanted turbulence, trouble, to be sawed in half by wanting it.

Kirsty Bowen, from Vinyl Poetry online (vol. 1)

                   

Music by Rosi Golan, “Been a Long Day”