I spent years writing poems in Moleskine notebooks at bars instead of focusing on my craft and connecting with publications and other writers.
About ten or so years ago, I woke up and decided that I had eaten enough meat. So, I would not eat meat anymore. Five years ago, I woke up and decided that I had drunk enough alcohol and decided not to drink anymore. I seem to get my fill of things and decide to then make a drastic change, that for these two big things at least, I stick with.
There aren’t any other changes I can think of that I made and did not keep, but I have tried to make better habits. Recently, I have decided that I have had enough with keeping up with the news or friends and family on social media. It is purer and clearer to me to write letters (read: emails) or be open to phone calls than to read little snippets of people’s lives or current events. Something about the way these fragments of life were presented to me, and more importantly how I would consume them, concerned me about the validity of my experience with them.
On this new path, I have taken inventory of the qualities that I do want to retain. When reading other writers, I suddenly lose track of what I’m reading and get lost in the dreadful pit of comparison. From down in that hole, I look up at a sun that looks the same as it ever did. And once I’ve pulled myself up and out of the hole, I look around and realize that I’m not as behind as my insecurity leads me to believe.
Instead of honing my craft and engaging with publications or other writers, I spent the first half of my life going to bars, putting my headphones in and writing poems in small Moleskine notebooks. The magic in those notebooks was alive from the moment I turned to the first fresh page. It survived as I made my way through it and up until the last line of the last page. Then, when spent, the notebook got chucked into a shoebox and a fresh one took its place. In those days I did not journal, but in place of that I scribbled down different lines that came to me during the day and then let them loose onto the page to explore whatever depths or depravities they wanted.
I was, all during that time, a slave to the process of poetry. Not so much as living it, but existing solely inside each one for the duration of the creation of it. Then my soul was jettisoned out of that place and fell into the dark jungles of another place. Like a vagrant, I wandered from place to place, taking little interest in anything other than a target feeling or expression. That probably accounts for how inaccessible my poetry always was. If anyone else were to lean in and take a look around, I seriously doubt they’d be able to recognize any of the things I was saying. Sure, there’d be a phrase or two or a word usage that would be commendable, but the overall story behind each poem was never laid out in a way that would allow a visitor to be welcomed.
In fact, it was that exclusivity that gave me my edge. I was privy to a world of my making and being there – truly living in those dreams – was the most important and exhilarating feeling of my day. Lubricating these dalliances into fantasy realms also made the trip easier, but near impossible to escape. Some (and later most) nights ended blacked out. Coming to in the morning, I would feel around for my wits and senses and find them scattered like a broken mirror around me, the pieces reflecting a horrid character. Guilt driving me up out of bed, I would reach for the current little notebook and turn to the last pages. Shame would dry up as I began to read, and I was filled with the sense of vindication that destroying myself was creating a beautiful art worthy of my sacrifice.
It has been years since I’ve opened up that shoebox and gone through those notebooks. But even if I were to look inside, or to be able to discern the drunken chicken-scratch of the words, no poem would be worth losing the ability to create. Poetry for me had been an outlet for delusion. It certainly wasn’t the driving factor of it or any mental illness, but it is invariably attached to them. Since being sober, I’ve probably written a few dozen poems in five years instead of a few dozen a night. But losing that prolific inspiration was well worth the clarity that comes from having a clear mind and more pure body.
I do not visit those places anymore even though I’d be amiss to say I didn’t daydream of confidence that came from just simply being a poet and nothing else. Now I am a father, a more valued husband, and most importantly: a man. There is more than just a single purpose now and my writing is an extension of that expansion. In reading and retaining more, in being able to listen better to others, and in being present in the actual minute by minute of my life, I am becoming a better writer.
Do I feel like I lost that edge? Certainly. Reading my older fiction, I can still see when the train picks up steam and chugs along the tracks, rattling the steel of the engine and barrels forward in pure and unadulterated chaos. The sentences are flowing and fierce, but the stories themselves are dark and filled with characters that are so one dimensional they could all be the hallucinations of the protagonist. All the dialog is bitter and though sharp as razor blade, it does nothing but cut and slice. There is no peace, there is no mending, and therefore there is no true ending or closure to any of the stories.
I do not miss the feeling of writing poetry, because the way it comes out of you is in an uncontrollable torrent. It is like, for me at least, a hurricane coming to shore. Vast and powerful, but proudly destructive and unwavering in its hunger for tragedy.
Now, writing to me is becoming different. Whether or not it is something that will be more widely read or popular is one thing, but the first thing it must be is accessible and that is the goal in front of me now. I want to write stories about the deepness of people and also some beautiful sadness too which is difficult but certainly not impossible.
In order to do that, I have been opening myself up to reading more and shedding some of the anger that came from isolating my art.
I’ve collected anything I could find that will float, fastened it all together and set off from my island. The wind will take my makeshift sail, and I will float until I find a new land under a new sky that though it shares that same sun as before, welcomes me into its light finally as the person I want to be and not just the person I am.
