I apologize. Something has shifted for me. I know I am not the only one. It is one of the beauties of the blogs that we can freely come and go. No one is beholden unless they wish to be or somehow their conscience won't let it be otherwise. I feel beholden a little. I simply can't get around the blogs like I feel I should. I mean this for the riches I gain when I do, not really because I am under some obligation. I look at the list I follow and yearn to go. I just don't have the time or focus for it. Often I stop by, read a little, love it and rush on.
I am also not writing poems like I did, and this because most of them are written as comments. This lack of time feels like bad news in some ways but of course it is the shift in phases, now that I have over 900 new poems or so. Perhaps in a little while poems will start again, but right now work presses, and my lack of energy takes care of the rest.
Here is one reason I don't like this.
My Best Poem
Life keeps getting me.
I try for another word
and it just won't come.
Instead it's laundry
or something else worse
that imposes on my time.
Thickets in my heart
resist me and my
indolence is natural.
Then there is the day
and all it brings me
that cuts through my obsession,
kills my best poem.
January 31, 2009 10:32 PM
************************************
I have no idea when I finish a poem how good it is. I am filled with it, and of course from there, as the freshest poem it is also usually the best one if it is not a clunker. What is my best poem? The next one.
Finally, that was the last January poem. This next poem could be about the blogs but I don't think that's how I wrote it. It might be about Twitter or Facebook, but I don't go there. It is about being shallow, I think. It is certainly a poem my last girlfriend would write. Having spent a couple days with her, I remember how nonstop she is. Phew. I value stopping.
Something To Do
Talk, talk, talk, I say,
all this talk and wordy clouds
billow up around
this odd gathering,
all here to chatter. Over
there the tools idle
for lack of my hands
and yours. We forget ourselves
as we huddle here.
There is something needs
doing, I think, another
poem, home repair,
feeding the children,
cleaning up after the cat,
giving love to you.
February 1, 2009 9:45 AM
Contraction
1 week ago
One of the reasons your poems resonate with me is that they describe various aspects of the human condition (Christopher's condition at the time of writing or some other time in your life; mine at the time of reading or some other time in my life) but they always seem to say a feeling I've felt. Both of these do that.
ReplyDeleteLove "thickets in my heart".
The mundane everyday stuff has to be faced and darn it, it takes up the time that would have been creating and relaxing and BEing.
ReplyDeleteMissy, thank you for your thoughts. I know well the futile efforts of trying to force poetry. As to using prompts, I can't even fathom any wrong way to get a poem.
ReplyDeleteKaren, it is even possible with the God given gift of compassion and empathy to write the human condition of some other person, as novelists do all the time. This also can happen in a poem about a true to life but invented character.
I think some of my best poems are about creatures not even human.
Techno, thank you for noticing my complaint.
ReplyDeleteLife is what happens as we are busy making plans....time is always passing....when we are kissed by the muse , we write , other times are for healing, resting, eating , sleeping and making love.
ReplyDeleteYou are being very hard on yourself.
ReplyDeleteTruthfully, it's almost a relief that your amazing consistent output, as well as your generous and conscientious responses on other blogs are easing up a bit; it made the rest of us look bad!
Rest, dear friend.
No one from the Blog Police is going to come a'knockin if you don't keep absolutely up to date on everything all the time. Your comments are always gifts, and I try to leave gifts of my own, but gifts are never to be expected; they just happen. So take a break, take a week off and go somewhere quiet and write only as much as you feel like, and don't worry. Things will still be trundling along when you return. :)
ReplyDeleteI, for one, certainly don't know how you always manage to keep up with everyone and leave such kind remarks and beautiful nuggets of poems wherever you go :)
ReplyDeleteI value stopping too... life seems to move way too fast for me. Lots and lots of undone...and not enough time to be...
Just time to breathe...
Just wondering ... what is worse than laundry?? ;)
hugs to you.
phase shifting.....
ReplyDelete{{{Cherie}}}
ReplyDeleteWell, I am not all that hard on myself. Instead of asking permission, I announced my slow down. Lucy, thinking of making you look bad just boggles my mind. How could I ever do that??
Joseph, I am not speaking to the blog police so much as I am to a vow I made to write two poems a day. That would be easy if I had more time. They want me to work at work. Huh. Last year I was able to write them anyway. Not this year.
Faith, cleaning up wet soggy cat poop is worse than laundry. Knocking moss off the roof in the summer and cleaning gutters. Unclogging clogged toilets and sump pumps. Bathing cats. There are surely more... :)
Ghost, you have left a picture of quantum porn. Maybe you didn't realize that. That's an up quark making the move on a down quark. Charm and color come out of that union.
ReplyDeleteI get feeling like there is so much talk going on and no substance at certain points. There is only so much life force that can be given to each separate interest and life sometimes becomes drained out of us. I often feel that way, that life is asking and I have nothing to give. Gather inspiration and then come back again.
ReplyDeleteSG
Every morning as a discipline I go to MSNBC's Morning Joe. This is a talking head show. Talk talk talk. The same issues, but let's examine it this way. That way. With him. With her. With them. On the other hand. I stay with them until it is time to actually eat breakfast. Then I shut them off and listen to meditation music.
ReplyDeleteI guess I am not a politician.
I so relate to both of these, to things getting in the way, to making time.....to feeling squashed on one day and flying the next.
ReplyDeletesigh
xxx
we come and go
ReplyDeleteperhaps silently
but always
feeling
to say something
and
this is the time
our best poem is written
with no words...