Laughter Lacking Substance

I demand the leave to ignore sense.
What business do I (the whining one,
The creature without self-esteem or confidence)
Have to be aspiring to something that everyone else already has?
Why bother to strive for something that I'm obviously
Too stupid to maintain?

Yes, tell me I'm a joke, but you'll have to excuse me
If I'm much too busy laughing at myself to notice.

I never claimed to write for any sort of purpose beyond
Self-satisfaction or self-comfort--
Which is an ironic thing to say, really,
Considering that writing in the first place makes me
So spectacularly uncomfortable by the end,
When one has to show what they've done,
Justify what they've created,
When maybe there isn't any justification at all for the sad,
Sulking Salomé of a monster that you've parented this time.

Do you know that it actually hurts sometimes?
Do you know that, occasionally, wrenching the ideas from your head
Feels like a thousand little hands slapping your temples in unison,
Aching, pounding, biting, striking,
Relentless and miserable, and utterly, horribly worthwhile.
You can't even tell them to stop.
Do you know that, sometimes, when inspiration strikes,
It feels as though a million little voices are screaming at you from all sides,
Saying over and over as an idea dances close, "There it is! Don't give it up!"
As all the while the idea teases you and slips away, as the little hands slap,
And eventually you simply lay your head down and cry from frustration,
Because if the ideas want out that badly,
Why are they so slow to come?

I tell you, I'm sick of sense, and of reason--
And if that reason should rise to consume
Or try to presume to understand my motives or my mumblings
I'll take such extreme delight from stamping it back
To roll over and over upon itself
That even the formless angels making love to their own grace
Might be taken aback, and might stop, and might notice.

They might say, "Look at that one! Look at that one!
A poet without a voice! A writer without words!
Hear how it howls on and on, and what is it saying?
Listen to it trying to articulate, to pontificate!
What a sad attempt.
Listen to that sorrow! Look at that creature trying so hard
To be something that it's not.
How very pathetic.
What a Delilah! What a cuckoo's egg! What a peacock's feather!
All pomp, no form; all vision, no flight.
How sad."

I'm a withered leaf, a corn husk inked in scarlet,
Blood from my lips, taken from night after night of biting in frustration.
I'm a cracked quill, a seashell that within holds no ocean's earthly roaring.
I'm a fire waiting to die, a seagull waiting to cry,
A wide-eyed spectator lost in adoring.
Where is the window seat? Tell me, where can I sit?
My legs are lacking substance of a sudden--
Just like my words.

And here I am at last, just the same as I've ever been;
I can add convention on top of convention,
And garner all the knowledge of the universe,
But it will still never feel like enough.
I will never be real. I'll remain a fantasy,
A dream, a wish of someone wanting to be something more than they are.
Vocabulary, structure, research, wonder...
It never adds up to enough.
When will the real writing happen? When will I say something that means more
Than just the sum of a dozen words or a handful of verbs?
And in the empty, cloth-furnitured room of my heart, I know the answer is,
"You never will."

I'm tired of sense.
Isn't there any way to go without it?

Finished: 09/10/05