October 30.21: Coping

My muse sent me this. Very funny.

What is it with writing? Why do the words  jump up and down and clamor to be heard in my head sometimes, and other times they are dead silent in some black hole?

I had a wonderful instructor once who said that when we hit a writer’s block it means we’re avoiding what we should be writing about. But writing is always avoidance, it seems to me. When I’m trying to write, I am not reading the news, cleaning the kitchen, or driving among our homicidal species. Isn’t that avoidance? How do I know what I’m avoiding if writing helps me avoid so much?

At the same time, I know that writing often pulls us into places we’d rather avoid. I get that. But it doesn’t help.

There is only one letter difference between writing and writhing. It’s close no matter how you look at it. I’ve been writhing mentally for days with no writing to show for it. A word will float up in my head like some defunct alewife on Lake Michigan, then another, another, and suddenly I’m up to my keyboard in lifeless words.

I am thinking that this intentionally blank paper will be the perfect gift-wrap for the lump of coal a certain muse might get this Christmas.

 

 

October 22.21: Coping

Such is life

each rubber band

a predatory

ampersand

stuck in wadded

and

and

and

you try to peel

it bites your hand

entangled elastic

each discrete

yet all of a piece

inexplicably neat.

 

 

More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.

October 13.21: Coping

R-e-v-e-n-g-e!

This is gardener’s smuggery:

hoorah of zinnia frillery

despite cotton-tailed skullduggery.

 

(Apologies to Aretha.)

Yes, dear reader, this is that poor chomped zinnia that I mourned a while back. It recovered and set itself to showing those rabbits a thing or two about resolve. I might not have the zinnia patch I’d planned and dreamed of last March, but I sure got a brilliant pink sneer at the rabbits.

October 11.21: Coping

In the worn path of the daily

I walked. Bedroom to kitchen,

like yesterday and the day before,

when,

in this moment of the ordinary,

something,

some clanging silence,

stopped me,

stopped my breath.

Under pallid sky

as tired leaves let go their holds

on life,

spring!

Four years have we lived together,

this lilac and I,

but never a flower

until now,

this discouraged, bleak Now.

What forced its bloom?

Anger? Fear? Despair?

Why spring

on the doorstep of winter?

Is this tender-petal’d spire

telling me that

maybe

I don’t know everything?

 

 

October 6.21: Coping

Summer roars

its final word,

the likes of which

eye never heard,

majestic booming

portraiture,

October’s 1812

Overture.

 

More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.

 

October 2.21: Coping

I know that I am cranky

but it must be more than that

that sends me into orbit

from computer bloat and blat.

To its endless mindless deluge

of must-have things and stuff,

I borrow from the Bard

and cry out “Hold! Enough!”

Gadgets, gizmos, whatnots,

creams and pills and shoes,

dog food, hats, and cure-alls,

bathtubs, nails, tattoos.

“Buy and spend!” And “one left!”

“You have to be like me!”

and my favorite Brooklyn Bridge,

a gift that’s totally free!

Celebrities by the dozens

stream a glam who’s-who,

why are they important?

I don’t have a clue.

My computer gives assist

with Likes and Sends and Shares,

but what I really need

is a key that says Who Cares?