“Deafening
my pillow with the screams I throw into it.” A perfect way to begin a poem, I
thought. But poetry has become an intimidating word. I once leaped to embrace
it, not caring where I fell but I now fear it with all my life. I do to the
words now what I am guilty of doing to myself: force beauty out of nothing.
Fiery
passion, which once filled pages and books with a passionate fury, couldn’t
even light a cigarette now. Rhymes are for nursery tales…and I’m the jaded
scholar…tired of poems because I’ve read too many. I can no longer take heed to
dactylic meter, nor do I care much for alliteration. What was art to me is now
hanging in “drafty museums.” Plath? How fitting, yet not fitting at all.
My verbal
embrace has lost its edge. It used to cut. I would scream—not into pillows, but
unto paper. Blank, hollow, virgin sheets of paper—impregnated by my pen. Is
this what happens to old whores? They fade away? Forever? Perhaps this is the
beginning. Perhaps I’ll take control of what’s mine again.