Ink and Vein

I love poetry month.

I get excited about the idea of 30/30 (thirty poems in thirty days), I set up the books for the poetry display in the bookstore where I work, I look through my collections and try to choose favorite poems, and I eagerly await posts from others about the poetry they’re writing, the poetry they love.

This month, though, I have found myself unable to write poetry. I tried to write a poem on day 1, but couldn’t get into the flow of it, couldn’t get myself to feel it.

I decided to post a poem a day for poetry month instead of writing one each day, and managed that for two days.

I believe that times of turmoil are the perfect time for poetry, for music, for art of all types, because I know how transformative art can be and how vital it is to our well-being as humans.

Yet I have no poetry in me.

I’ve had little writing in me, lately. I have several half-started pieces, lines to begin poems or essays or blog posts, sentences for Facebook statuses or Instagram captions, but all my words seem to dry up before I can get them onto the page or the screen.

I’ve been in sort of a freeze state – not because of the political moment, really, though I’m sure that contributes.

No, the freeze state, if it is even that, came from community happenings that forced me to look at my own wounds, my own traumas, and to acknowledge them in ways I hadn’t before.

I think I’ve been moving through my days in a state of dysregulation since sometime in December, and haven’t found any ground to regulate myself again. I’ve been moving through my days, through my present, while delving into my past for my memoir, and the way I have been embodying my memories, reliving my memories, has left me pretty raw.

I’ve always been able to write raw poetry, but now, for some reason, I don’t have any poetry in me, or much prose, either.

I write book reviews for the bookstore, and I did manage a bit of work on my book on April 7th. Mostly, when I try, I feel the words stuck in my brain… they won’t make it out onto the page.

I’m writing this blog post, trying to articulate this problem, trying to puzzle through it, and still I don’t have any poetry in me… maybe it’s this: I’m tired of feeling raw, feeling vulnerable. I’d like to close myself back up again, wall myself off again, so that I don’t end up spewing out words I intended to keep to myself.

Poetry has a way of teasing out my secrets… maybe that’s why I can’t write poetry, because I want my secrets safe with me.