Be water, my friend.
Bruce Lee
Praise to the blocks, the stumbles and locks! They keep villains away, keep terror ad hoc. The purpose of a block is to channel, you know, a flow the consciousness doesn’t know; while laziness allows us to rock peace or pajamas. And what’s wrong with a lock? If you have the key, use it when you want. Don’t doubt that this praise is at once the cure and the problem, a distraction of thought — when you are bored, broken or blamed, just tread and kick, indeed paddle or skedaddle. We move forward at all costs, anyways. You can make it, don’t stop. As for what’s outside that halts or obstructs us, read . . .
. . . below, a series of praises for blocks, stumbles and locks. The element of water in our sight, for it never stops, only gathers and heals, might choke you, but never have you not feel. Each one pulls from a page in my current notebook, a page I penned in a moment of hesitation, for the distinct purpose of hurdling the hurdle.
Creative Blocks
Tears are poetry
Sweat drops prose
When there’s none left
Drink water and go—
Just write or follow
Go right ahead, don’t fool
Straight forward, you shadow!
Like glowing water, a-flow—
Always and alright
All right in all ways
Just spin and exhale
Siphon and intake
Give and inhale
Spin and expand
But whatever you do
From a wall demand—
Interpersonal Stumbles
Crawl, maneuver, climb
Or claw your way through
Maybe build a bridge too
One straight over and true
(But ever give up on love,
Keep falling in love.
Keep falling in love.
Keep falling in love.)
What I have got
Isn’t what you’ve got
And yet you and I
are one and the same
What I know to know
You don’t know you know
And yet you and I
Are the same, the same
Two but the same
What I want you want
And what you want I’ve got
And yet you and I
Can share, three times share
In the end, my friend
you and I are related
four, five, six times indeed
One and one and one the same
Break, literally
I’m stuck myself. Started this beast days ago and only I’ve been staring at it, at the lines — remembering once someone somewhere said art is one part creation and one part staring; makes sense if staring means editing, or admiring, or contemplating — but all this goes back to what I said in the sing-song up above: that not creating is ok, in fact part of the creative process. How else to put it?
The magical burst of inspiration we seek signals the brimming of creative soul in the artist. Who am I to say? I feel it right now — it is the only way I am writing right now. This post, compared to writing I do for work, is the brimming. Well fed, treated, visited, cared for, nurtured, supplied, alleviated, concentrated, while restless moves one towards output.
Then again, thinking about a book everyone’s talking about, titled the capital city of an island off the coast of a far eastern country, which was side-by-side held to my debut book as a book that in a good way narrows the reader — whereas my book in some way broadens the reader — and this makes me wonder, because maybe inspiration can come from debilitation, from mutilation, from drugs and evil, or both, or misdeeds pure. Not just from goodie two shoes happiness.
Blocks, stumbles and locks. Blah! Blast them. Jump over. Kick down. Or tinker. But above all, like above said, BRIM! Brim! BRIM! Brimmmmmm. Brim tales.
Love and War
Slime grime
Imma lol slap
a girl — said Cad
He goes south after
that. He is in the
air. No one can
hold him down. No one.
Except the real weight
of a million broken
hearts = all the bubbles
of a wake that his virility
made.
(Just do)
Away and again
the foam foams
from his chin
to skin to win
a contest called zzZ
who gets it gets it
do you get it or not
drop the rhyme dime
speed the skip dip knees
feel the deep breeze
give in to the mistakes
learn from them . . .
It’s easy not easier
to tell the truth.
One more, time, one more
Sometimes it helps to get over your problems (and therefore yourself) by wishing better for others. I’m not suggesting you volunteer or plant trees every time you run into a block, but boy wouldn’t that be nice for everyone else. How about, in song or in spirit, write or do something for someone else — Julia Cameron would say do something for yourself, take yourself out on a date — but what ever. In pray we heal ourselves, through pray we heal others. Time and time again. How? Like a professor of mine once put it, begin with the people closest to you, then move outward.
May my dog be at peace. May my roommates be at rest. May the neighbor bro be at peace. May my subway train conductor be at rest. May the grocer find peace. May my city be at rest. May Americans know peace. May the world find what it is looking for. And so on, and so on.
Please
Please, I need
to get my thoughts
in order. Come to
me, muse, help your
poet think of words,
sing through me
your knowledge.
— I just dropped
my collection w/ V.
He is so cool. I don’t
even know what to
say. He recommends
I watch
HIEM on language. May
he find what he is looking for.
Did this help? It was only to get it out. The brim, when overflowing, gets everything wet.
And we like that. A tune to tune out:
