Category: creative writing

You Have the Right to Write

Attention: You Have the Right to Write or anything you don’t say will drive you crazy by intense desire. Creative ideas will overheat until they melt themselves into fragmented descriptions of confused thought and drip like perspiration from your brow. Words will escape your mouth in an explosion of writer’s language. Soon, you’ll start bringing up the names of books to four year olds and correcting sentences fresh out your neighbors mouth, “..not a eraser, an eraser..” you’ll blurt out uncontrollably. Your lips are so bone dry they have wrinkles, and you trip over your tongue as if it does not belong in your mouth. You can’t even blame Writer’s Block for the frustration since you keep missing your periods at the end of sentences. Poor words, left to run on in a string of thought; breathlessly pulsating through veins hoping to make it to the end of your never ending consciousness. The least you can do is appoint a capital letter to keep everyone in check, a comma won’t hurt you either. If you find yourself in this condition, you have the WRITE to consult inspiration before speaking anything into existence, and to have a pen and pad ready for any glint of light amidst the darkness, now or in the future.

His crime? Not Writing!
His crime? Not Writing!

Blood Line

Slavery-TodayMy nephew has my birthmark on his chest. My face has my mother’s nose, and my smile is etched with my father’s teeth. I interact with the world as if on my own. It never occurs to me that I swing my arms like my Aunt. Or that the decisions I make may have already been made before. They say there is nothing new under the sun. I cannot swim. But maybe that’s because the Great Flood has traumatized me. Can I still taste salt water seas on my tongue? Have you ever thought about the make-up of a blood line?

The possibility that maybe you inherited these ways only to gift them to someone else one day. I smile at the thought. What would a little girl look like with my eyes, my words and my hands on her hips? How do I know my favorite tree did not bleed with the stench of my ancestors? And have I ever fathomed why Hurricanes take the same route as the slave ships? Can it be that bodies still burn like melted ash upon the ocean floor? Its smoke mixed with the wind before marching out to the beat of Negro Spirituals I could have sworn I heard on the radio last night. Or maybe that’s just the Harriet in me. Perhaps I may gather poetry in my arms like the wind released of its chains. Is it possible that words can free those who do not know that they are slaves?

Silence

Place-of-silence

An answer kept sacred inside the breast of nothingness. Thinking for the moment to have sent up hope into an empty sky. What becomes of silence? It ignores our hunger for answers and tugs away at anxious spirits. Uncontrollably the mind races to the next step, pondering what may become of lines uninterrupted by commas and periods. Of thoughts quickly running on to the “why’s” and “how comes”. Never once does it seek to ponder why silence makes such a covenant with our minds, commanding only a light breeze from the wind when not a sound is heard as it eases past our skins. Not once does the busy mind, always racing and so on edge care to ponder what is to be learned in the quite. Silence laughs at the foolishness of our impatience, grabbing time by the hands and together they leave us sick with questions. What is the next move to be made in the stillness? What revelation taps against the calm meditations of the heart? What revolution for our cries? What reproof must we seek to understand in the devastating muteness of the air?

Forced Post

Blank notepad and pencil

You feed yourself on unrest, as the words slide through the creative pockets of your thoughts for a chance to make it onto the page. The thirst for its shadow will not leave you to ponder the body of an elegant post. Will not wait for you to soar into the heavens and back down again to at least tickle the funny bone of those listening reading-these soulful melodies, these crafty closed forms or these smiling similes.

They say that patience is a virtue but dear post, you are obviously far too anxious. Time ticks away the sorrow of accelerated thoughts as this moment is snatched away by the whistling hurry of your footsteps. I can hear the coughing warnings of immature images and symbols just waiting for a chance to spread themselves over the white area of WordPress readers. I didn’t know thoughts could be so open. Fingers just itching to dabble in the beating of keyboards, to fulfill the empty space with black ink and collective letters that makes no sense. They are only there because you need them to be. And where would I sit with these words? With these thoughts scattered all over the bed? Who will clean this up for me? Is it you? Will you vouch for me? Can I count on you to explain the degradation of an unequal post?

While I wish to linger an instant longer within the creative workspace of these meditations, it is the forced post that entices me to distribute half talent and fragmented passion but I choose to wait until the creative energy renews itself. For ideas to blossom into something of value before obligating myself to this blog. Why snatch away the inspiration from a beating heart? I have not the water to waste on these words. My cup is only half full. I can’t be spilling stuff all over the place. I will wait.