the verb of writing / do you doubt me?
i used to carry a college-ruled composition book with me everywhere. then it was legal pads, the monstrosities. then it was hardback journals from walgreens, then it was field notes and moleskines, then nothing.
if i had paper and a flat surface, i physically could not stop myself from writing. poems, fragments, questions, rants, notes like that i felt “so side b”.
most of it’s bad – just by nature of the quantity and that i only kept these notebooks from around 17-22 (at which pointed i entered a very Boxed Wine phase and stopped writing entirely). but i’m jealous of how easily it came to me and how indifferent i was to how other people felt about it: if i thought of a provocative metaphor, i’d start writing while you were in the middle of a sentence.
on the one hand, i guess i’m too old for that; on the other hand, ew, says who?
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there isn’t a secret formula to writing for me. i don’t write more poems when shit hits the fan, i’ve never been a fan of writing drunk.
i have something to say or i don’t.
this! is! annoying! when you crave the act of it, the experience of articulation. there’s a noticeable absence on the tip of your tongue; “i have no mouth and i must scream” vibes.
scream what? i ask myself. SCREAM WHAT?!
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silentOrSilenced.gif
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i’m being dramatic. it’s not that i don’t have anything to say, it’s that i’m distrustful of the idea of being heard. not just in this medium; i feel like people lack the capacity to hear me properly because it requires the entire history of my personhood – my lineage! – and how could they hear that even if i could articulate it? it isn’t enough for someone to put themselves in my shoes; the reader has to be in my skin.
even then, could they feel the self-immolating rage?
would they believe it?
would they believe me now?
/
i feel the need, still, to make everything small, to neuter the story. life is hard; my devastation isn’t special. it’s also everything.
and tomorrow will still be tuesday.
p.s. here's a song