return to the morning pages

good morning.

we were supposed to sleep late, says the body but the mind don't give a damn. free time! free time! it says. why waste it sleeping? but body knows the consequences of little rest, after all body does all the bidding.

the morning is quiet. want to own my own home, to parade around naked everyday, because i can. but that costs all sorts of money and i can barely pay my phone bill. it scares me and yet it doesn't that writers make very little money. why? because i'm a romantic. either i'll be one in thousands that does make money OR i won't need money because my art will sustain me, body and mind. (body huffs and raises a middle finger).

i just got out of a deeply emotional relationship with a very real and engaging story. now i'm a free agent, free floating. i feel naked (and still no room of my own really) without the characters i drew or the settings i built. i'm returning to earth in my little spaceship and the thought of gravity is heavy and reality is oppressive. i'm returning in my little space ship patting my pockets, searching for a seed so i can go traveling again.

it's rigorous work, writing. people sometimes don't understand that. they think you sit in a room and you fiddle with a fountain pen and dream your hours out of existence. people think it's a calm and mellow thing like smoke exhaled from your lover's lips. but what other writers tell you is true. it's not romantic (though it has it's moments), it's a very difficult and very wild profession. it never stops. one story finished then there must be another. a writer cannot stop writing for fear or losing everything: the inspiration, the hope, the love, the self.

so i pour cup after cup of coffee trying to stay a little ahead of the pen because to drop it, to drop out, is defeat and i would be too full of sorrow to carry on without... this is because artists have found their own unique way of talking to the world. sometimes i don't feel like talking and that's understandable BUT to be unable to talk, essentially what happens when you stop creating, feels too close to death. that sort of surrender might as well be ultimate.

i cling to lines and gather up words, trying to cover my naked body.

art for art's sake

you called me a depressed poet and i liked the sound
liked the sound of something deafeningly absolute
so surely sure
as water's wet.

my mind tremors like a body held to loving
only one way
everything else is east indian voodoo and
spines like mine don't bend like you do.
used to the arms and legs of a story
stored up in a body
i create and caress and worship and
yield to
daily.
know it as sure as sure as
a needle sticks
and a period is the half-life
(at least it's not the ellipses...)
(or the parentheses)
used to live
living in a story
act one
then two
then three
back to one.
but this is some swinger shit,
some crazy one night stand
for the sake of sound
and getting one out and
letting it go
and exploding in a dada-esque
implosion
type of sound...
ungrounded
not found...

who said it made sense?
the body is for loving
as the fingers are for loving
and writing...
(there she goes with those ellipses)
who wouldn't want to ellipses this?
this manic free-write,
this all over the page, crazed
word play
make it last forever
because we both know it could never stay
never stay...
never stay...

wild writing is just that
wild
a story makes a better pet

it feels like the best sex you've ever had
reeling out in the free write
don't tell me you haven't thought
of leaving that slaved over manuscript
that carefully tended poem,
the tracks of an album you've killed and re-vived
killed
and re-vived
for a year
or a lifetime,
don't tell me you haven't thought it
once,
or twice
or hourly.
letting go
Thoreau-ing your fingers into
mysterious landscapes,
sensory lust
for just
the pleasure of it

perhaps that's what they mean
by art for art's sake.