Oh, NaNo, you pulled a bait and switch. I haven’t given up on you, but you’re getting on my nerves. It’s like giving palak paneer to the girl who ordered a steak, medium rare. And giving the mushroom-feta puff pastry to the person with food allergies. But if the table is big enough, and there are enough people breaking bread together, everyone is going to leave the table with a full and happy belly.
That’s kind of how the creative life is sometimes. I went to write a novel, and instead jump-started my poetry writing which has been dormant for some time. There are so many ways of being creative. I feel like as long as I am creating, I am doing right – whether it is the project I intended or not. When the poems go, I let them go. When they come back, they have changed in shape, style, and form. They go underground and come back up in what is to me, a beautiful expression of the Tao. I’ve never tried to control my poems; maybe that’s a failure. But it’s the one thing in life I don’t wrangle to control, so I let it be. I know I haven’t developed the requisite discipline of the craft, but at least I’m creating for the first time in a while.
Of all the acts of writing, poetry for me is the most intimate. It’s the most earth-shattering. It’s the most instantly healing. Poetry for me, glows like E.T.’s finger. It probably looks like nothing magical is happening, but when I write a poem, it’s like there’s an electrical storm arcing through my body. Regardless of what you think of my poetry in particular, and regardless of what you think of poetry in general – you have to respect the impulses and the act itself. It’s pretty cool. And I reckon that this sensation is what anyone fees like when they’re in their bliss station.
How does poetry heal? Many ways. For example, there’s a relationship in my life that I’ve been struggling with for more than a few years. No matter what angle I approached it from, and no matter how I tried to coach myself through it, nothing ‘worked’. This morning, a poem was ready to come from it. It’s a simple poem. Somehow, there was a click, and I was ready to surrender something that had once been vital in my life. I was finally, through the working of this poem, ready to let this person go. Maybe I was ready all along. Maybe the poem was just a culmination of that readiness; but somehow, the process of honoring all of us crazy humans and my moving on didn’t feel blessed until I’d ‘written it out of my body.’ Yeah, the catharsis is real. Here’s an excerpt from what ended up being a ’round’ of tiny poems:
I can’t remember the last time
And today, that is what hurts.
Was it better when I was
Expectant and placid
Ready as a silent March pond
To receive the skidding feet of Geese?
