Poem A Day Begins Now

April is poetry month.

Come back in May if you're not able to endure. I enjoy it, so I'm going to thrust it on you.

As a side note, thinking of poets, so often described as tortured souls, struggling to write, I see myself.

In the hazy places like the minutes before sleep descends and inside the steam of a shower, I am eloquent. I have deep and meaningful thoughts. My words sound wonderful. I know within my soul I am a brilliant writer with something real to say,

and then

I get near the paper

and all

is

lost.

Somehow the act of reaching for a pen makes it slip away and I'm left with nothing but garbage. Trite, silly words and dull, boring thoughts that have been thought to death by everyone else.

Somehow in the unseen spaces of life, I'm something amazing. I've grown up to be the thing I dreamed of.

Makes it sound like what I do now isn't great. Mom-ing is great. It is a job I love and seem to be OK at.

And, I HATE attention. Having someone recognize me or notice me for ANY reason is beyond mortifying for me.

So, how does that meld with the idea of writing? Don't know. Somehow it just does. I know, as everyone does, that all writers are somewhat possessed of a recognition need.

Perhaps it's just the split personality that comes with a pen.

No, I'm not clinically crazy. Thanks for asking.

Here's today's poem.

Nancy Sullivan

Telling It

To speak out clean.
Let the words be
not wonderful but the plainest
nouns, the skinniest verbs
that are themselves
the poem, not merely holding
it together.
The shape of poetry:
the shape of words, the words their own shapes,
the shape of many words together.
All right.
Poerty is the soup,
not the can or kettle
wrapped around it.
Telling it, telling it clean
is the meat.
Today the words are right.
They are right here.
I find what I mean
to tell myself the truth.