You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Derek Walcott
You dip the pen
in your own blood and wrench the words
from your most caustic pain,
and write. Write the horror that is life
refracted by your eyes upon the page.
You have forgotten
what it is to be silent, to hold your selfhood
as a sacred thing free
from this sacrifice of your vision for art
at the expense of privacy.
Permit yourself to pause.
Staunch the flow of this red ink at fingertips.
Fold away the parchment
you have flayed from your thinnest skin
and rest in your own most quiet reflection.
I am still playing Play It Again! with Old Toads. This poem arises from Kim Nelson's Sunday Mini Challenge, Love After Love, and owes its imagery to Mama Zen's Blood of a Poet, although I did not manage to complete it in 80 words.
This is our dilemma, digified silence, or writing the words that insist upon coming. Wonderfully written, Kerry.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Sherry. You have been such a faithful reader of my poetry for a decade, and I can't tell you how grateful I am.
DeleteThis is absolutely gorgeous, Kerry 💖 I think that is the challenge we all face from time to time .. learning how to channel our energy into writing but oh when we do .. it's so rewarding 😊
ReplyDeleteWhat a marvelous and compelling summary of the poet's dilemma! Great one.
ReplyDeletePouring it all out on to the page is cathartic but as you say at the expense of privacy and makes one vulnerable.The price paid for truth seeking. The purpose of poetry as I see it.Interesting poem.
ReplyDeleteDo I dare disturb the universe? Do I dare to eat a peach? Such a dilemma. This is one of my favorite poems ever, the Walcott. And also the Prufrock. So many dilemmas. thank you for your leadership and truthfulness. The parchment from our flayed skin...yes, it is exactly like that, every word.
ReplyDeletePoetry is all the more alive when we sacrifice a little of our heart's blood to it. I can't say always love the process of rooting around in my veins for the deeper reds, but the results often satisfy me much more.
ReplyDeleteI like reading this, Kerry. Write to and of our hurts and then keep them private, store the writing in a safe place where no one else will read. I have a 'restricted blog' where I am the only permitted reader. If my computer crashes or is hacked or the house burns destroying my saved stuff it will still be there. Until blogger crashes or quits.
ReplyDeleteSome of my hurts are written there, never to be published, stored as "draft".
..
Kerry, we really have no choice but to write, and this says it all so beautifully.
ReplyDeleteOh... the pain of passion... does it always have to be a choice between numbness and ache?
ReplyDeleteSometimes it's like that. And when it is, I think it has to be. I think some poems just 'will out'! This one of yours, for instance, seems to have needed being said. And your readers might well have needed it too.
ReplyDeleteThis mannered public bleeding we call poetry -- forced by some necessity of spirit trapped in flesh -- it's a rough lover, ever beloved, forever gone, never letting us settle for just poetry. And what if anything has it meant? What coin of worth was ever there but glints of welcome? What I see here is a habitation or form which is supple and willowy and survives, if only for its only sake. Which is priceless, in a way, something your fellow poets admire and wish for in their own barrow Semeles. Amen.
ReplyDeleteI adore this poem, feel it whispering in my ear. xo
ReplyDeleteI think we've all felt like we write from our guts and that likely involves a little blood!
ReplyDeleteIt's hard isn't it to know which is the more sacred- the contemplative silence or the expression of truth!
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