Author’s Note: I was looking for this description of beetles, which was NOT what I remembered. But I thought I’d share this freewrite from the early 2010s.
My friend suggests I write a poem and zip myself back up inside my skin.
Already, I feel constricted.
Write a poem. Be poetry. Fill your cells with a liquid so thick that it splits grapes like when they are drowned in water. Rain is supposed to be healing, but too much brings rot deeply into the sandy skins of sweet fruit until gemmed beetles cling to their squishy bodies and suck the succulence out of their core.
Today, I called you, but you were busy. I wanted to ask, What juice do you drink? You have a husband and daughter to fill your attention span. What do I have but the blank page? There is agony in knowing how produce should fly forth from my fingers and in knowing that the only birthing I have really done comes wholly from the gray matter in my head. And I ask, Didn’t that matter come intact during my expulsion from the womb? Does this mean its processes and functions owe their success to my parents? So does that mean whatever I create was just waiting for energy to bridge synaptic gaps? Always these shadowy paths were in my brain. Were they just waiting to be walked? Does anything belong to me?
I worry about the unworrisome. Nothing I think on this page will allow you to know how to eat or pay that dentist bill. Instead, it is the hunger that claws around my insides. It is how my brain passes the time. I love a jigsaw puzzle. I love to hound out 1000 scattered pieces and shuffle them together into a picture. But with poetry, there is no master picture. I constantly need to think, What am I building? And then I think WHAT IS UP WITH THAT?!
I’m writing in my old sketchbook where I once drew a series of hands. It’s always amazing to see how my art goes from poorly drawn misshapen hands to 2-dimensional proportionate paws. But even that’s a trick. The truth is that an artist must learn then relearn to never draw the hand. Instead the artist draws the light and shadows. Then the hand appears. To attack the hand directly never brings the hand into relief. To attack the things it touches brings it into perspective.
That was very helpful, Friend. Thank you for my writing lesson, today.