I used to write poetry.

Coleridge once said "poetry is for the very young", hence the theory of the Byronic complex. 

The young, vibrant, often violent male intelligence forging its way, etching out life through pain and poetry.  

But once grown he becomes silent or mute and happy or complacent.  Maybe the truth was that poetry 

is either for the very young or the very old. And age is not chronological, but rather attached by relative means 

to all sentiment and feeling. And then we can always write. If we choose to.

And I could have written you a thousand letters with my fallen thoughts upon this paper...

I used to write poetry...

The Beauty of Partiality

I love the beginnings and the end.

And in the middle,

I love the room to question.

It is a playground to haunt.

A mysterious gaunt  

That becomes so alert with understanding

As it is depicted.

The more distressed it becomes,

The more complex and stunning it appears.

You could live a life out of pure irony,

Many have.

You could send letters to editors

Explaining it all,

But the world not would be able to interpret

The way that you so vainly address

Every issue with such ease,

As if you regretted it already,

But were hiding it so well.

If prudence is just,

Then why have foresight?

And why is it so bad to live miserably

When half the world

 Is constantly restraining their regret?

I believe in the joy of sweet, stinging sorrow.

As if catharsis were granted

In step with meaning.

Then how could we not

Hold on to a half-placed world

So thoroughly incomplete

That the only way to achieve anything

Is to mistake it?

We live amongst the disposed.

Writers’ Bed

Of yourself upon a hard bed

Where our faith does not exist.

I took that stack of papers

Down to your desk,

And I glanced at your work

Despite your request

To never let loose the meaning or intent.

You, silent player of what is right,

You, the hero of the night,

Christ has found his better brother

In you tonight.

You choose the way to leave.

It was nice of you

To give so much of yourself

To the imagination.

This way the softness

Can linger in feigned lust.

And the eagerness can vanish

unnoticed.

Mismatched syllables

Take effort to roll onto the page.

I am glad to give you that.

Syncopated misfortune.

It is something, at least.

Do with my musing as you will,

You always did.

---EKN 9/16/04

I used to write fiction.

--From “Breaking Water” by Erica Neal

 

  “In the beginning the world was flat", Ptolemy told us. And we believed. Then Copernicus told us our land and water curved spherically onto itself. This theory defied previous logic, but we learned it to be true. Our thought is a result of our expertise at the time. And ignorance can be bliss, as so long as the bliss ultimately does not result in any significant pain or blood loss. 

     I was never one for myth, the facts seem to be more reliable allies to me. But then lies the age-old question- what do you know for sure? Empherically so, the answer truly is nothing.  And so to live like this can be a blind walk to the ends of the ocean, but fortunately for us the ocean leans back on itself, and eventually takes us to land once again.

     Their town was not on the edge of the world or even near it, it was buried under woods just miles from the interstate. It was five minutes from its exit sign and had little history that anyone knew. 

I used to be a writer.

After a long life intermission filled with change, love, marriage, children, work, and greater higher education, I have come back to myself as a writer. I have been writing and writing. Remembering how to find words.....

And rarely, but sometimes, I am seeing the moments again-the hallowed briefs in between the thoughts we have, the words we speak, and what we really mean.  And I laugh for no real reason other than just because I can still see. I really was not at all confident. So perhaps out of contrition, I am returning to a place where I think, and I read, and I write.  

Even when the day is long, because it always is, and even when the last hours before my laptop turns on my two precious children have somehow managed to suck all warm-blooded life out of me, even then I find myself compelled to try. I open one eye, then another. I drag out my ancient, reclaimed trunk from the attic, and pull out of it my history, my pieces, the mismatched bits of myself. 

And I am really not at all confidant in myself, as a writer, anymore. I was confidant at one point, or at many points in my life, I suppose. I can not much remember time before I felt myself writing either on paper or in my imagination. I find it funny that as I have become so certain of myself as an adult, a career women, a lover, and a mother, I have become less in myself as a writer. 

So I am starting this blog in order to keep a journal of sorts, to name the parts, and to meet others who can hear my voice and whose I know. I can not promise anything. And I am at once reminded of words from the American poet, Stephen Dunn:

 "Here is where loveliness can live
  with failure, and nothing is complete. 
  I love how we go on."

   
  Please join me.