Why Write?

Who do I write for?

 

Can I even call myself a writer? Is writing all it takes to be a real, authentic writer? How do we even compare ourselves with the term? Is a writer defined only by those who read his or her work?

 

Where will these words go? Will they float around in space? Will they become part of the past as dust?

 

Maybe I’ll publish this collection of words I have built.

 

Maybe someone will find it after I die and publish something.

 

Or, maybe something amazing will happen: maybe someone will fall in love with these words.

 

Maybe someone will read them like they would drink water in the desert.

 

I don’t find myself being a true story teller. Yes, I have stories to tell, but finding the medium in language where asymptotic understanding converges is beyond my talents.

 

Just a tiny thought can take all the words of a novel to spiral in on.

 

Some can hit the mark with three words.

 

Some need to write novel upon novel.

 

But here I am.

 

Singing to the wind.

 

Some days, artful expression is one of spending energy, some days it is one of creating it. Perhaps, it is the same thing to create energy and spend it. It seems to happen simultaneously. There are moments where I’m sitting on my energy, twiddling thumbs, waiting for traffic to move or for the clock at work to hit the 5. But then I get home, I crack my fingers, I stretch my neck, the keyboard waits for me, and I just can’t seem to push out the words.

 

I write for the same reason that I get up in the morning. I have to. I’m going to wake up, for there’s no way to truly sleep forever, though some days I would wish for it to be so. I’m going to wake up, though and I’m going to have thoughts. So, I write them to taste them. I write them to put a leash around them. Like yoga, writing stretches your mind, allowing it to relax at the same time.

God’s Song

These laments that I mispronounce with fluidity of tongue and pen are the spectrum of color playing tricks with the white light of the page. To me, these misspells are life: you either love what your doing or it becomes a prick under the finger. Sometimes, everything I do seems wrong. Things happen to me that I curse under foggy breath. These are just the days of shadow under the Sun, the sand left from the ebb of the tide. Negativity being wrong or bad is child’s play with words. Negativity is simply the other end. It is not something you should duck from or hide under the tabletop, where illusions are served, in reflex to. It is as natural as the rain.

Before the Sun comes out, you might want for it. Those nights of stagnate sleep make the grog of morning seem to shine in your headspace of anticipation. I eat breakfast while thinking of the day before me. I wonder what I’ll find, today, hidden under some stone unturned. I vow to be the one to find it. When I bend my back and stretch my legs to lift this unturned rock, I find underneath it a simple reminder.

            You are not what you are, but you are what you are not.

            When did poetry climb into the dampness where the insects hide? I swear to you that what you are searching for is already taped to the back of your head. You simply need others to tell you in words what you have had all along.