meat

The beginnings and the endings are what I struggle with the most in writing. And in life? And in relationships. But the meat of the story/existence/love, I excel. (Would the middle be considered the meat? The middle is where you meet people and yourself and fate, but then again that meat and those meetings can happen at the beginning and hopefully at the end as well. So scratch that part about the meat of the story/existence/love and forgive me for not choosing more appropriate words and for littering the rest of this with unnecessary words and tiring parenthetical statements and questions.) Okay, back to whatever I was beginning to say about everything that comes after the beginning. The middle. I can handle the middle and I can run with it and enjoy the scenery, but when it's time to win (or at least finish) the race, I freeze up. My words grow cold despite the heat I can feel through the door. The trick is to open the door and let the warmth envelop the frozen, eventually leaving puddles of doubt to dry. So go open the damn door, Meg.

Okay, but here's the middle. I claimed mere minutes ago to be a near expert on the maybe-meat of the story, yet I'm stumped. I guess I have to be telling an actual story in order to continue, correct? All I am doing right now is slinging words on a screen and pretending to know what I'm doing. I am not sure I'm fooling anyone, but if I am -- thank you! Thank you for falling into my trap and boosting my ego a little teeny tiny bit.

Should I be writing stories? Isn't that a worthwhile thing to do with this vast landscape of time I have been gifted/cursed with? But I was never a fiction writer, at least not on the page. I was and continue to be a fiction writer of my day-to-day life, sure, but not one who comes up with plot and setting and characters and slaves away to magically bring them to life through the power of ink and sheets in my Moleskin. No. I was never a fiction writer. But a poet. A poet, perhaps. Perhaps a hesitant poet maybe probably kinda sorta. The unanswerable questions and all that's left out (in hopes that one fills it in with the senses) is what draws me to the poem. So if I cling on to the title of poet, it's best if I actually, you know, produce a verse or two every full moon at least.

At least. I have the sinking suspicion that I am doing the least these last few years. I have my moments where I am doing a little more than the least, but those moments are fleeting and unpredictable. I need assignments, I need directions, I need deadlines. I need a push a nudge a punch to the gut and the only way for me to get rid of the pain is to put it in poem form, formal or not. Just get it out. Get it out and get it together and get that door open and get outside where the fireball in the sky is fitfully waiting for something to ignite.