Vancouver, B.C.

For the Poets in Times Without Words

It happens. You stop writing sometimes. You crawl inside the world. When you believe you are the monster you?ve created. You?ve grown into Dr. Frankenstein. Operating on yourself. And all the empty notebooks in the world won?t stop the universe closing in. It?s got hands of its own and they reach for your throat when you sleep. I want to write. I want to write becomes I want to burn the pens of the world on a fire using the paper and pencils of the world as timber. I want to roast my heart in the toxic flames. Then crawl inside the Earth. Pull a cold stone over my head and drown.

Stand still. Don?t move. Don?t breathe. Stop that incessant beating of your swollen heart. You own nothing but empty space. You know nothing but words. Words that fled with their hands over their head when your self-doubt began to eat away at your spirit like acid.

Hope doesn?t always spring anything. Ask a poet on her judgment day. When she weighs herself on a scale against the enormity of her principles and fails, finds herself unworthy. What have you done? What have you done with the woman I believed in?

You look in the mirror every morning and see monster. Monster. Empty. Lazy. Awful. Dumb. Dumb. Stupid. Sludge. Leave me alone. I HATE YOU! My reflection gasps and backs away, bleeding from my words, shocked and afraid. I am the monster I have made.

I want to cry, but I have no eyes. I want someone to hold me but hands pass through what ought to be my belly. I crumple into a ball and throw myself away.

I grieve for you. For myself. I believed in you. I believed in myself. I don?t believe in monsters.

Shh, baby. Lullabye. Close your eyes. I know you have them. I know you can still see straight when you try. Remember I want to write became I want to love, to live, to dream, to study, to feel, to fly. You had to lie fallow your fields.

Fine line between fallow and stagnant. Between rationalizing one?s inertia and strengthening one?s psyche split open like a pomegranate cracked in two, insides rotting. A fine line. I teeter on the tightrope. Fall to the east, fall to the west, fall to the self you love the best . . .

Don?t just stand there. Move. Breathe. Draw yourself out of the Earth and dance to the drumbeat of your ever-swelling heart. There?s infinite possibility in empty space. You need nothing but words. And you have them. As long as you don?t abandon yourself.

Find yourself crying in a corner of the mirror. Look at the deformities and pockmarks and recognize them as beautiful. Address yourself only as Beautiful.

Whisper I believe in you. If she doesn?t hear you, laugh I believe in you. If she still doesn?t hear you sing I believe in you. When her eyes, accusing, dart back to slap you, when her lips raw and red backhand you with the words I don?t believe you, apologize.

Apologize for the self-loathing, for the self-doubt, for the fear that wouldn?t let the words come out.

Look at the monster you?ve made of yourself and be proud. Remember the phoenix, the griffin, the gargoyles, the dragons, the sirens, the witches, the prophets, the poets, the Blacks, the Queers, the Jews?every single magnificent other?these were monsters, too.

Cherish yourself made of monster and dreams, of demons and pomegranate seeds.

Believe.