build a concept
from words and stanzas,
make it stand like the structure of a house
but the house still needs full walls and floors and a roof to keep it dry
so decide:
are the walls paragraphs of a story?
is the foundation actually one a play can stand upon?
or will the covering shelter end up being a whole novel?
or will it stay a poem forever?
only reviewing and editing can do that —
but only writing the first few words
will give you the skeleton
to build upon
i feel like i need to let myself write
Whatever
in the morning
i’m stuck in the process of
Morning Pages
to be about me
and Morning Poetry
to share with others,
but this habit is For Me By Me
so if i should, say, want to write a little script
or short story where
i have no idea where it’s going,
that’s for me to decide
[plus, i still have so many poems in the past
and i’m sure i’m going to keep writing
personal/postable poetry as i go,
i can take a day or so
to write weird maybe non-poetry type things]
[and perhaps
possibly
maybe one day
i may even
post one]
writing out what i need to work through,
but jumbles of feelings
and half-formed stanzas of
partially-formed thoughts
aren’t really something i’d want to share with
‘the public’
[or even, really, with myself]
so i guess i’ll write about writing
for the three-hundredth
three-thousandth
three-millionth time
and post that here
and hope
it at least makes some sense
and doesn’t feel too
deja vu-y
the problem with my desire to write
both poetry and prose is that
my poems feel more like journal entries
and my stories read more like poems
and when i try to make sure one feels like itself
[or even if i force into line the opposite kind
of writing that most folks find stable and ‘right’]
it all feels forced and off and awkward in the daylight
so, i suppose, i should just always write without expectation or label or genre
or even a plan for any words that come to mind?
i suppose, i should just
write?
all these scraps of songs
portions of poems
i’ve written in fits and starts
bursts of energy
of creativity
of enlightened states of being
just to fizzle out
after one verse
one chorus
one instance
of what i truly want to say
and have nowhere to go
no how-to-end-it
no place to place my hat up on the wall and say
“i’m satisfied with my words”
stress
and apprehension
and it not feeling like
an actual opening
and the stories we tell ourselves
about ourselves
when i tell myself these stories
it’s to try to solidify
who i am
because i have no idea
i have no plan
~~~
does one good line
make a poem?
is this my style/my curse?
~~~
my poems are making little to no sense to me
this morning
but i’m still writing them
i’m still dilligently typing
words and phrases as they come
hoping to find some meaning
some
time
soon
if only i knew what i wanted to write about/
if only i didn’t start hundreds of poems
immediately after closing up the morning poetry page/
if only i could access all the unfinished lines in my mind
from last night and prior nights
going back years and decades
and mine them for inspiration for today
now
this morning//
but instead i find myself sitting and staring/
and hoping and despairing/
and writing about writing
and random morning things
[maybe, every few weeks, i should actively make morning poetry
into nighttime poetry
and see what happens
then]
my head is all over the place
which can make for interesting poetry
when i cannot follow one subject all the way through
but fifteen different thoughts have already sped through
my racing brain
but the sleep is also tugging
and i have no way of judging
which direction to go
or how much to write
or let go
or just let it be
as it is
in this mess that it is in
~~~
if i actually followed the stream of consciousness/
the different trains that blast off from
the one station of *my brain*
i still don’t think i’d have words for most thoughts —
‘high speed’ ‘ugh, typing’ ‘that beat’ ‘coffee’ ‘food’ ‘puppies’
none of those words tell a story
in the way i’d want my poetry to express —
how i called it a stream, but i feel like my thoughts are trains
holding all the context for each word within each car
but they blast off like high-speed rail, something i’d love to have in this
fucking country, and sometimes i’m on the train itself, but sometimes i’m left at the station
waiting for all the thoughts to come back to me, eventually
[hopefully whole, with some new passengers/context aboard]
~~~
i feel like the more i write
the worse my poetry ends up
and i don’t know what to do
or how to think
about that.
the drive to write is strong —
but what to write about
never seems to come along —
like i’m sitting at a type-writer
or a pen and paper notebook
and i am hovering above what
could very well be brilliant
imagery/alliteration/metaphor
and simile and allegory all
stuck together, but instead my
pen/finger tip just shudders,
the ache of keeping it up
too long as i wait, the heaviness
of the potential i feel in my
body mind and soul too much
too much for one little
writing utensil/blank screen
to hold, so instead i write
about nothing, i write about
wanting to write, i write over
and over again meta poems that
never seem to come to any sort
of fruition or resolution or
conclusion, and i continue
to write and write and write
and here i am again…
i’m unaware of what is happening in my mind
i feel like i’m always looking, but never find
what i expect to find
the kind of content, the product, the thing to capitalize upon
the hustle culture
maybe i’m
just meant to be
chill and writing and soft and free
[aren’t we all
meant to be
free?]
kipventures 