And Now For Something Kinda Different ...
National Poetry Month is upon us! In the spirit of NaPoWriMo, what follows is raw, unrefined, pure? Proceed at your own discretion!
Friends! It’s been a minute since I’ve made a post, and although I haven’t not been writing, what’s arrived on the page hasn’t been ready for even friendly public consumption. But here we are, at the gates of spring and April, which, unlike T. S. Eliot (“April is the cruellest month”), I find encouraging and can’t get enough of—and with April arrives National Poetry Month and spirited calls for daily poetry writing and going to readings and carrying small poems in one’s pockets. Doesn’t it feel life-affirming and a little bit defiant of the Winter We’ve Had (by which I don’t only mean the weather, you know) to try to write free and gushing from some internal spring (and/or Spring, running water or season or both)? It does to me, and so I’m going to put that effort here, where you’re welcome to read it, if that’s your sort of thing, or not. And maybe you’ll want to join me, even a little? I’d love that.
The rules I’m making up are as follows:
write something every day, no particular amount
start writing, do not pause or go back, do not edit (except, putting it on Substack, I will punctuate with line-breaks and will correct spelling so as not to be a complete barbarian toward someone who might actually try to read)
no disclaimers: what comes out is the point, even if it’s . . . dumb? weird? alarming? Hey, one person’s dumb, weird, and alarming is another person’s favorite film/novel/poem, so . . . let’s have at it!
True confessions: this feels very naked to me, putting unrevised writing out in the world, and I don’t know if I’m going to like it. But I think there’s something to learn from doing things that feel risky and uncomfortable: I hereby challenge me to do it, and you can, too. Or not!
With no further ado, here’s what emerged from today’s attempt (a response to the first prompt in this list, in case you’re interested in trying some prompts yourself):
What is beginning what is ongoing beginning what is what is what beginning is is starting is awakening a waking waking up a morning a hello an epiphany a seeing it seeing it firstly seeing something like the first time you saw it like it wasn't there before even if it certainly was always was though always isn’t a thing except in human lifetimes short enough for some things to be always the same not really though and not if you look closely at the molecular level or whatever where you can see the stone compressing so so gradually into metamorphic from sedimentary from schist to shale to slate if I'm remembering right that kind of shrinking down that gravity makes happen to everything fortunately for humans and most softly living soft bodied things we are brief enough not to become slate ourselves the petrified compressed versions of ourselves would have to live differently than blood and air and water circulating we'd be flat eventually and not pliable and not hollow the harder down gravity pulled the less hollow we'd be no tubing left inside and so we'd be something else a metamorphosized something else but maybe not quite in the way Ovid imagined it he was an optimist who thought that endangered humans could under dire circumstances be freed into animal bodies or become trees deeprooted in the earth and those states would relieve something terrible about humanness though also they come with a price one is not to be able to speak which is something we love and must need because how could we do it so much if we didn’t need to as much as eating and being the right temperature we need speech and maybe metamorphosis would include a learning of how trees do speak through roots and water and mycelia underground in massive invisible networks and maybe we’ve been unintentionally mimicking trees and fungi all this time making our massive invisible networks in the air maybe an idea once formed is like a virus tapping on the doors of possible hosts looking for spread that’s the way a virus speaks by copying itself and making small mistakes and copying those and over time a whole elaborate text tells of the virus’ history its family tree its travels but back to the beginnings the beginnings the way i begin is in amnion the way i begin is in darkness and warmth the way i begin is emerging the discomfort of transition the pain we’ll call it of going from unconscious to conscious the adjustment the adaptation now the air is separate and i have to breathe it my lungs work and i can control them or not my heart works and i can’t convince it to go faster or slower than it means to but maybe i could but i don't and my legs work stiffly at first and my thinking works slowly at first and doesn’t want to be employed just because my eyes are open but this is the way in this is the start of it each morning another chance at being something another chance at whatever it is i’m supposed to be doing here is it just what i want or what someone else wants or is there a template an instruction lost somewhere a manual in another language i have little hope of understanding so this is the start the blank slate the wide open field to cross or not the familiarity of the home box the soft bed the dog with his welcoming belly exposed the sharp heat of bitter coffee saying everything after this will taste sweet count on it it's a blessing a spell a rite to perform at crossing a threshold threshold a word that always beckons with promise and mystery who’s there what’s there show me