Writers' Blocks

Are you tired of the poems yet? Well, too bad, because you're getting more. I have this strong inclination to keep posting old work throughout Lent, I'm not sure where it's headed, but that's what I aim to do. In trying to "write more," I've discovered all these obstacles to trying to write post college-life. First of all, no deadlines. If I have as long as I need to do my work, why do it now? Second, I seem to have forgotten how to find inspiration, write poetically, revise, or do anything good, ever. I had a couple of false starts, as well as some playing around with old work that was supposed to go somewhere, but it all seems to have fallen out of the old brainpan. Sometimes I even manage to scrape together an idea, but when I go to put it on the page, it doesn't sound like a poem. I would say that I've just lost the touch, but one of my favorite pieces that I've ever written was written post-college. Which brings me to the greatest stumbling block: work ethic. I bet if I sat down every day, even for as little as half an hour, ye olde skills would start coming back to me. But, that hasn't been happening. Sometimes I wish my schedule wasn't so erratic. But, I have to remember, I've come a long way already. Six months ago, I thought the Craft was stone-cold dead and I would never be a writer again. Silly me. You can't kill your art. You can only cryogenically freeze it so that it falls into a very deep sleep and it takes tons and tons of work to figure out who you are enough to wake it up again. That's all. Piece of cake...?

This week's installment of "old-poetry-meant-to-inspire-me-with-my-former-skill" is from my senior capstone project. It's a little darker, but it feels appropriate.

Finding the Geraniums, Gone

With the winter coming on,
I guess they felt they had to do it.
But now the green mounds, the
neat plots of geraniums are
decimated. Each plant has left
a crater in the world of wood chips,
a conspicuous absence of flower
and form.

And I wonder, who did this?
who decided that unnatural yanking,
prying palms and fingers should
do the work a jealous frost had
set aside for himself

It must have been a dirty job.
I think they struggled, as
they were torn from the ground.
I can tell, because around
each pothole there is a strewing
of dark flannel leaves,
the bright drops shed
from blood red petals
like a scattering of hens’ feathers,
in a butcher’s yard.