Writing is a way to
evacuate your brain,
an attempt to corral unruly
thoughts; joy, pain, rage,
into ordered little sentences,
lined up on the page.
Once you start, you just can’t stop,
once you’ve popped the lid on writing,
you’ve just got to purge it,
and hope the stuff
you’re churning out
won’t be up itself, or turgid.
And it can make you insane.
It can drag you, screaming,
by the hair into a dark and dismal alley
known as ‘memory lane’,
where you pick your nervous way
through broken glass, in brackish gloom,
and peer in blackish corners
(where someone’s peed)
looking for a frail, elusive little bloom,
that usually turns out to be a weed.
And it stops you communicating.
When you’re focusing on writing,
It’s not too good for talking
To your family. And they say,
Mum, what’s for tea?
And, Mum, my brother keeps on hitting me,
and standing right in front of the tv.
And, Mum, see that laundry? Is it meant
to be
In that puddle, damp and muddy?
And Mum, Leon’s put the cat
In the washing machine.
And twenty minutes later,
You say Hmm? And then, Sorry –
what did you say?
But by then they’ve given up
And gone away.
And you think, that cat
looks whiter-than-white
clean today.
And you hope, at some point,
your words will have a huge, dynamic
and dramatic impact.
And while you strive
for that, writing will distract
you, for a moment at least,
from your drab, mundane, little life.
