If You Run Out Of Paper

I cannot for the life of me get my current prose piece on the go.  I have been editing, adding and deleting, re-arranging but nothing else will come, except for the small piece I've written.  It pains me because I really like the two new characters but something is holding me back, preventing me from telling their story.  I thought I might get to spend some quality time with them on Sunday when I was home alone but once I tinkered with my Christmas tree and a poem, finished a pile of neglected laundry and tidied up, I ran out of steam and out of time.  I'm leaving it up to inspiration now.  I can't have writers block because I've been writing poems like a maniac.  Maybe I was just too please with myself after 'Whistle' and rushed into another idea before it fully formulated.  I rushed into a good thing head first.  No good ever comes of rushing.  I do hope something sparks soon, I really want to share my nwe characters with you.

I polished this puppy off today.  Fussed with it and it's ripe and ready to be sampled:

If You Run Out Of Paper 

if you run out of paper

in the genuine pursuit of truth to

rediscover the beauty of the past

do not despair

it is widely accepted and understood

we often overlook imagined examples

of clarity & brevity for curiosity & inspiration

& how far we can stretch our arms open

to muscle through a path of creative content

if you run out of paper

be at least curious about the moment

you will find the instant suits you

do not protest

art is happiness methodically examined

so great an invention you will never have

to worry if your prose will triumph or your

image rich song is better sung in a folksy drawl

if you run out of paper

be sure to listen for the cheerful melody

that invites you to lose touch with your reservations

write on the walls or write on your hands never be

heartbroken to report you missed a word for lack of 

parchment

if you run out of paper

orchestrate a perilous tango of madness

because obstacles are emphatically verboten

if you run out of paper

you have arrived

**

Of course the premise here is that no matter what, never stop creating.  If you run out of ink, use a crayon.  If you break a pencil, use finger paint.  Just keep going.  And really, if you run out of your creative supplies you must be producing one heck of a piece. That's never wrong.

Think it's time to bundle up and carry myself out for a walk.  Throw in my earbuds and move around a little.  I intended to make today the day I return to the gym.  With daylight savings time, when I'm reading on the commute home I often get lost in my book (in this case my Wallace Stevens poetry volume) and I drove right by.  I promised myself exercise today, I need to get back to good healthy living.  This sitting down and working all day is for the birds, it may be great for writing time which I'd never complain about but my rump is suffering.  I must move.

Happy evening, friendly readers.

In propinquity,

Nic

Sunday Morning With Wallace Stevens

Sunday Morning With Wallace Stevens

there will always be time for paradise

between the pages of a posthumous opus

on a Sunday morning with Wallace Stevens

& a stack of single-spaced American sonnets

to camouflage my infinite longing for poise

quietly we discuss the depths of imagination

while I rifle through my worn-in handbag

& he re-organizes the formula for poetry

there will always be cause for confusion

between my reflection and his encumbrance

with experience’s heart pulsing in my palm

& an entire winter of muted illustrations

to occupy his reclusive contemporary aplomb

nothing prepared us for what we would discover

from our time spent together chewing oranges

& sipping home-made wine from chipped goblets

the residue of our combined private predilections

sound after sound make a perfect song of loss

championing the seventy-five verses composed

on those calm Sunday mornings between breaths

intellect made of us a series

intention made of us a celebration

there will always be time for heaven

between me and Wallace Stevens

grazing the circumference of revolving angelic choirs

syllables in intervals illuminate the darkness of things

me and Wallace Stevens

***

Gearing up to hit the road for a weekend away but not before arriving home to pack to find two fantastic postcards waiting for me in my mailbox.  More for the collection!

Be nice to each other.

In propinquity,

Nic

Curriculum Vitae, Ars Poetica

I was playing around with words today, stealing seconds and minutes throughout between busy spurts at my work desk.  I had difficulty focusing on any one thing for too long; my head has been pounding like a bass drum for forty-eight hours now but somehow I still managed to pull up my proverbial socks and stay lucid and poetic-y.  This verse was a mere shell, scratches on scrap paper and then I started working it around until it was singing up at me.  It’s a little on the esoteric side I know but I’m going to save this one for the next Open Heart Forgery reading.  I can’t wait to unleash it and read it aloud.

It’s really just about writers and what they do, how they do it, why and for whom.  I admit, I often would only write for myself but now that I have this little home on the interweb I’m content to share my words instead of hoarding them in writing books tucked away for safe keeping.  I’m all about letting words breathe now, less tense about releasing what I write and so pleased to have friendly readers (even if you don’t always enjoy or ‘get’ what you’re reading, I still appreciate you being here).

Curriculum Vitae, Ars Poetica  

Discreetly, in my own words

& in my own passionate assignation

I have anthologized my last soliloquy

& all that has escaped me.

With the aid of notable presence,

active exercises

& conceptualized patterns

supreme fiction and paradoxes

inhabit the middle.

What is written first

& the last voluble lexes

disclose the shapes of the world

mirrored against my internal theatre.

With ambition, I seek

stronger sympathies for artistic labor

by my oblique ability to infiltrate

rococo ingenuity & lure capricious counterparts.

I, without hesitation, by my own assertion

endorse charmingly ribald admissions

that the veneration of my elevated artist

is

imaginative realism

dominated by the constant desire

to upend conventional expectations.

Abstain your banishing of poetic currency

from the support of penciled illustrations

look forward to the precipice of peace

& permit me to push the margins of excess.

This bookish ideal has persisted for centuries

& whether it was meant to confirm or deceive

a litany of language remains a constant curiosity.

Cease to falter on a fulcrum of reservation

or consent your acute perspective to hinge

on egregious grammar & snarled semantics

it is certain the result is commonly chimeric.

Subtly, in my own pristine voice

& in my own arcane acknowledgment

I am the architect of a true sequential story

& all that I have been hard done by.

Don’t leave me to weep

don’t repudiate my place

or

deny me the challenge to

cultivate an audience for poetry.

It’s a writer’s life,

& an extraordinary duty.

Visit me, my entangled alliances

& my fine assortment of verses.

I am a good hostess,

let me read to you.

 **

And as a sidenote: once I’m finished reading John Taylor’s highly anticipated memoir Into The Pleasure Groove, I’m going to dig in and explore some of Wallace Stevens work.  How did I not know how wonderful he was before this!? I can’t wait to read every poem he’s written.

Second sidenote: thanks so much to everyone who stopped by to read ‘Whistle’.  I received so many lovely notes of praise and even some constructive criticism, all of which were so appreciated.  It was also quite a coo to have my Dad who has so often in the past toted my lust for writing as a passing fancy lament how much he liked it and proceeded to ask open-ended questions about the characters and then where I planned to submit it?  Alternate universe? Perhaps but still a welcome surprise.  So thank you again for taking time out of your busy lives to read and share your thoughts.  It means oodles.

In propinquity,

Nic