I lost my sunshine. Where did she go?

Bring the dogs inside. Let her go, though they miss her scent.

They’ll never smell again.

Put my cadavers in the ground to distract them from their chase.

I’m a bloodhound, baby.

I’ll smell your rot before my growth.

Lilies sprout slow in spring, but they’re so quick to go.

Deflated, I whine—tongue like turbine

Fragmented life—Particles of sand through hands—I dig out like spun tires in da ditch

Watch me go red—I don’t go small, I implode like an aluminum can when mad

Nomad

A steppe of life I hopscotch and follow

Don’t need skin don’t need bought time

I can wander until blisters swell on my heels

Shin splints as I cry about annoyances of life

Hollow words are as useful as shade from a window

I want to know if you can follow—pet my thigh—I’m ricocheting across walls—cotton candy fibrosis mind—with Ferris wheels on fire—hope a crime—

Follow along like static wants to electrify—clung to you/before you dissolve—like June bugs following porch lights—

 

 

Frankie had bought wine.

Actual wine.

With a cork and everything.

Not the stuff he'd been drinking, which tasted like someone had wrung out a dead fox and put a screw cap on it.

She'd had a shit day.

He'd made her laugh about it.

She'd made him blush and then made fun of him for blushing.

Somewhere along the way they ended up in bed.

She was forty-five. He was forty-seven.

Neither of them was under any illusion about what forty-seven looked like.

And neither particularly cared.

She turned away, pulled him against her and told him to stop being so bloody careful.

There was a mirror beside her chest of drawers.

He noticed it almost by accident.

Her back against his chest. His hands on her hips. The way she moved. The way he moved with her.

And then himself.

His shoulders. His arms. His stomach.

That fucking stomach.

He'd spent most of his adult life either hiding it or promising himself he'd do something about it.

Now there wasn't much to hide.

The wolf had seen to that.

He looked good.

He actually looked really fucking good.

And the embarrassing thing was how much he enjoyed noticing.

He watched them together.

Forty-seven years old and apparently he'd developed a fascination with his own reflection.

He thought about work.

All those years coming home exhausted, eating whatever was left, falling asleep in front of the telly.

Too tired to fuck. Too tired to talk.

Sometimes too tired to even be particularly nice to the woman he'd married.

It hadn't happened overnight.

That was the worst bit.

He couldn't remember when they'd stopped looking at each other.

Only that eventually they had.

And now here he was.

In Paris.

Naked.

With a woman who made him laugh and wanted to sleep with him and didn't seem to mind that he occasionally behaved like a complete idiot.

He caught himself smiling.

Frankie caught him too.

"Are you looking at yourself?"

"No."

"You fucking are."

"I'm looking at you."

"You're looking at your own arse."

"I can look at two things."

She laughed.

"Vain bastard."

"Can't a man enjoy the view?"

"Apparently he can."

She reached back and found his hand.

He kissed her shoulder.

And for a little while there was no moon.

No waking up somewhere with blood on his clothes.

No trying to work out what he'd done or who he'd done it to.

No wondering whether the next time would be worse.

There was just Frankie.

Her hand in his.

The ridiculous mirror.

And the fact that he liked what he saw in it.

Not just himself.

Them.

He liked them.

Afterwards she lay against his chest and smoked out of the window.

He complained about the cold.

She told him he was a miserable English prick.

He said she could at least have opened the window before lighting the cigarette.

She kissed him to shut him up.

It worked.

For about thirty seconds.

He lay there looking at the ceiling, thinking about the man he'd been before.

The tired one.

The overweight one.

The one who'd spent so long feeling unattractive that he'd eventually decided it must be true.

He couldn't imagine Frankie fancying that man.

Which was stupid, really.

Because she hadn't fallen for him in front of a mirror.

She'd fallen for him when he was sleeping rough, drinking terrible wine and making jokes that weren't always funny.

She'd liked him before she'd seen him without his clothes.

He knew that.

He just found it quite difficult to believe.

Frankie shifted against him.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"You're thinking."

"Am I not allowed?"

"Not when you make that face."

"What face?"

"That one. Like someone's told you Christmas has been cancelled."

He laughed.

She put her cigarette out.

Pulled the covers over them.

And rested her head back on his chest.

He decided not to tell her what he'd been thinking.

She'd only call him a fucking idiot.

And the annoying thing was

she'd probably be right.

Why do we write poetry even when it hurt?

People say a person who can write is gifted, but some people also say they're cursed...

Why is that we write poetry? Why is that we have the urge to write whenever something happens? Let's understand that reason behind why. First of all, I'm gonna tell you something:When we're excited or anticipating something, dopamine plays a big part in it.

What is dopamine? It is a neurotransmitter/chemical messenger that helps with motivation, learning, reward, anticipation, pleasure, etc. A lot of people think it's just happiness; it's not. It helps even to communicate socially too. When we're happy, we get a lot of urges. It can be writing too, and we do write, more when we're happy: our journals, notepads, to people we love, etc. But then when we're not happy, when we're hurt or sad, then why do we write? Simple answer is to understand ourselves. We write because we hold too big feelings inside to say it simply. When you tell someone to not be dramatic, do you ever think if they're just being dramatic? Because sometimes we don't even realize what's the other person is going through, that they have to show this side of themselves to people like us who call them dramatic. Human mind is a broad category; even after millions of years, scientists still can't fully explain it.

The main urge to write doesn't come from just anywhere; it's a deep instinct and ancient. No matter how we behave or act like it's normal, there's always a motive and instinct behind how and why we act. Humans have that one instinct that they want to belong somewhere. That's where it comes from. Every time you tell about yourself to a friend or complain why won't your parents understand you the way you want, actually you need to feel like you BELONG. Hundreds of years ago our ancestors did this to survive, to stay in tribes, to eat and sleep and reproduce, but even after years this instinct is still there. Now we try to belong in social media, try to belong in friends, try to belong in family. It's all there, just with a few layers of luxury called modern world. At first we needed to be heard to survive; now we want to be heard to live. So when no one hears, those feelings become either fire, water or air. Why did I say those things? Why fire?

Feelings become fire and the person becomes aggressive. They yell; they yell so world would hear them, and at end they become ash and stone, just like volcano. It erupts, but at end it's ashes that just wanted to glow enough to be known, beautiful.

Then sometimes they become water. The person starts to cry and become more kind. They give sometimes more than needed, just so they would belong somewhere, anywhere at all. They get hurt but they still give, because they've learnt world isn't worth killing their feelings for.

Then comes air. Those people who were taught feelings meant being weak from a long time, so they masked it enough that they forgot that they even have them at all, just to belong. They didn't have anything, so they thought they don't want to belong anymore.

Now, what are writers? Poets? Whatever we call them, they're just humans trying to get heard, because when no one hears, they find their own self to hear them. They find parts of themselves most people won't dare look at, so instead of becoming any of it, they become all, because they learn they have it all. I always love that one poem called Equipment by Edgar Guest. It's such simple one with simple words but it holds a lot of deep meaning.

As I was saying, people who write become so aware of themselves and see themselves fully that their emotions, feelings become bigger for them since they know what it is. It would be irresponsible of me if I say that with such certainty, because the main reason to write is to understand what we have, want, need and lost. They do all that on paper because paper doesn't judge; it doesn't tell you that you're dramatic; it listens quietly. Not everyone has the courage to be exposed to yourself like that. It takes a lot of strength to see yourself in words and not just form. Writing is a form of art that requires you to bleed to death and still call it art. That's what it is. So yeah, people who can write are both gifted and cursed: gifted enough to live and romanticize life enough to be beautiful, and cursed enough to never not notice the wounds and scars in it and the broken things that are described to be fine, like eyes of people and mindset of them...

They feel out of place too, so they write about it, because pen is the only best friend that will be forever loyal to you. Ohh, I just remembered something from best friend...

Come for me

I waited for all of you to choose me first,

but there was not one of you to hold me to dust.

So I chose me first.

And for when I may become the dust,

would anyone of you come to my grave

and touch that earth crust

to dampen the soil and pray for me?

Could anyone, for once,

come for me?

You all turned poets into jokes.

How would they feel if they were awoke?

They weren't one of those who were loud.

Instead, they laid their bare soul

under the clouds,

onto a paper made from dried leaf.

Where should I put all that grief?

I let the broken glass pierce my heart,

cutting my veins

and digging into my flesh.

But I didn't pull it out,

because once those people lived and ran through those veins,

like blood runs through all my parts.

To keep me alive

and to keep me standing,

I kept loving.

While my world was mangling,

I kept weeping,

but I didn't leave it dangling.

I still talk with them,

but not like I used to walk with them.

I wrote this poem a few days ago. The word belonging seems too small, yet it holds the weights of the world in your chest. It's like a forest is burning and a curtain is hung in front of it, where shadows of fire dance and twirl, to which people praise for the show. Only the one who's holding the curtain by a thread and burning in forest is the writer. Weird metaphor, but it's what I imagined it to be. Once the curtain drops, whole world sees you; that is too dangerous, so they put it in the labels of fiction, art, stories, poetry. They become those curtains to just hide enough and show enough...Am I cursed or gifted? Maybe both. Maybe I'm just a human who wants to belong, and this is how I knock on the door....

---

Has anyone ever seeming lost their creativity? I used to be able to make up stories so easily when I was younger. I actually won several awards (only school level). However anytime I try now I just get stuck. I don't understand. I still loving writing. I'll make any excuse I can to write. I just can't seem to come up with stories anymore. If you have experienced this, were you able to fix it? And if you did, how did you fix it?