I Wanted To Write A Poem
Something that was thoughtful and intelligent that would make people nod meaninglessly in quiet appreciation as they read but I can’t, okay, I can’t. I’ve tried to write a poem for days but I end up trashing everything because all I get now are streams of consciousness, of rants, of long thoughtless run on sentences of a million incoherent thoughts that have no commas or pauses and IT REFUSES TO BE A POEM and it REFUSES TO UNDERSTAND that no good comes from the endless vulgar outpourings of grief (if there is grief? perhaps i am grieving for my lack of grief because i still have not cried for your loss)
this sad excuse for a poem refuses to understand that to be an artist is to look at pain in the eye and then scare the fuck out of it as you wrestle it down and chain it, to pull out a scalpel as it whimpers on the floor and carve out the ugly unnecessary parts to wipe away the snot but leave tears glimmering in an aesthetically pleasing fashion because nobody likes a crier but nobody likes an emotional brick either
The most common advice that I have received after a breakup is to take time off to find myself as though I had suddenly gone missing under some rock somewhere and I needed yoga and singledom instead of milk cartons to find me. But I wasn’t lost before you, or after you. The flowers are a little less beautiful, the morning sun a little less warm when I can’t share them with you but I am still me and I am not lost. My mouth shapes itself into your name whenever I want to burst into song and it takes a little while to find the words again but I can still sing (off key but at least I am not mindlessly chanting your name). I have avoided poetry because I see you creeping between every line I have avoided writing because it all becomes senseless after a while but I am still me. Just writing essays because I have to instead of poetry (so really nothing’s changed this is me doing what I always do.) And this poem still refuses to be a poem.
(overcomingalexithymia)
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Written for Singapore Poetry Writing Month 2015
