Heavy Thoughts

I’ve got a bit of a meta poem for you today! To be honest, I woke up a bit early, sat in bed and thought ‘what am I going to write about?’. I had some work to do and some little bits and pieces to tidy up, but then I sat down and just wrote. This is what happens when I let words just leave me and enter a screen, apparently: some sort of commentary on the actual process and impact of writing itself. Maybe it’s because I’m in a small room with the curtains drawn, so there’s not much else for inspiration – who knows? In any case, I hope you enjoy this poem!

Heavy Thoughts

To remove these thoughts from my fingers is to ache,
and to yearn that my body will learn to soothe itself
with some other coping method. Survival is a question
when it rests upon my ability to spit words onto a screen,
or a page, or into a loved one’s ear. Knowing that these
words, these syllables, these letters–that they, when
connected in unison to form sentences and paragraphs
and verses, can enchant a mind and embody a soul…
it is a heavy thought, at least, and its weight
attempts to suffocate me as I lie here, creating,
wondering if I should create or if I should languish
in the solitude that silence brings. I cannot.
It swells within me, the ache which I know so well
and which so many others must have experienced before me;
it cannot be ignored, so I return to the keyboard,
but the spirits of paper and quills and dipping pens
mimic my every move.