I’ve done a lot of stream of consciousness writing over the last couple of months—most of it absolute drivel—but even when I think I can’t write, out comes something that has some meaning, and becomes a found or accidental poem. It may not be the best writing, and I do hope it’s not too self-pitying, but it is true writing, and so worth sharing.
I wish I had some words
wish I could write poetry
something to make sense
of where I am
but I don’t have words
don’t have understanding at all
I can say nothing
can put nothing down
and I read novels
these dystopian tales
by women and I think
I will never write because
I will never be able
to make sense of my thoughts
like them those brilliant women
will never have the imagination
to write as they do
the courage to embrace ambiguity
to face such difficult things
I guess I have been avoiding
looking into the eyes
of the death mother
even though I feel
such an affinity
with her
I keep wishing to
return to the earth
because I don’t know
how to go on
yet I will change my thoughts
when my energy changes
that’s what always happens
and I become new
and different
and it’s so stupid
that I am not myself
that I am more than one
that there are selves inside
and they come out
at different times
I know
this is just a mood
that will pass
I know
still there’s some truth
in how I feel I feel I feel
I wish I felt more and better
knew when I was distorting
telling myself lies
I wish I understood
learned faster
was a better human being
for a line I read in a book
told how feeling terribly
about yourself
is just a kind
of narcissism
and so I really wish
I could stop thinking
about myself at all
and just get on with life
but the problem is that
I can’t do anything
except this here
(and badly at that)
so all I think about
is myself and my feelings
a world of grief
and I wish I could go elsewhere
be something different
new and reborn
transformed
something
anything
but I am stuck in no woman’s land
a dark place
the emptiest of shadowlands
perhaps your unique subject matter is exactly this lived, cyclical reality: the shadowlands, the return to light after long periods of forgetting almost what it is like, mining the depths, a patient (or not so patient) waiting, an understanding of emptiness that is the necessary precursor of fullness, and the greatest strength of all...how to live with grief and pain and powerlessness. we need the wisdom of people who navigate these shadowlands and a knowledge that goes beyond/under/through dystopian vision to the magical point where grief shares an edge with hope. those who dwell periodically in these darker depths may be the seeds of an un-guessed at, unimagined rebirth. children of the bone mother, who eats what is dead and prepares the world for new life...
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for your words, they are balm to me right now. <3
DeleteI think you are right. The shadowlands are part of my reality. It's how I navigate them that matters, and what I can bring back from the dark places. I need to make the bone mother my friend.