Thursday, July 13, 2006

In Pink Ink

When the music is faster and violins repeat the same phrase and melancholia slips around my body pinning my arms to my side and my psyche to the ceiling of my skull. It clinging there like a frightened cat that thinks, "Oh, shit. Now look what I've done. Won't someone get me out of this thing I have gotten into...I'm slipping...nails slipping!" When the very cells of my body scream, "We know this feeling, have felt it, loathe it. Save us!" When the smell of coffee and pumpkin bread doesn't comfort, but instead taunts that I will never feel that feeling again. When the pen in my hand, pink ink, doesn't brighten the words I wrote --
I wrote
Iwroteanyway.
It's all I ever knew and
what I ever do and
I will never stop
because just like that cat
I'm clinging and the words are my claws
and the page is my ceiling
and sometimes I don't really know
how I got there,
but I know the words hold me there.
And eventually, someone will come along
with a telescoping ladder
and rescue me
or, more likely,
I will take a deep, whiskered, meowing breath
and just let go.
So far --
I always land on my feet.

6 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:32 PM

    Amen. Been there, done that.

    "I always land on my feet."

    Somehow don't we always? Well, some of us do.

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  2. Oh, wow, this is good. Really good.

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  3. was inspired by you to post one of my own poems here.

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  4. wow. ouch. writing thru the shit resonates with me, too.

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  5. I love the part about the words being your claws and the page your ceiling. How true that has been for me in my own life. And it seems when I am able to write it all down without editing, then I am able to get up and walk away and let go...at least until the next time that I find myself clinging to the ceiling/page!

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  6. This is really wonderful ... oh, the power of the pen and words!

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Feel free to critique the poetry. I employ a sophisticated thick hide technology.