Being Addicted to Poetic Prose

Why I’ll never be a successful writer

It is with a rhythm that I scribe, a cadence one better. With pauses and causes and intentions, I spill.

I want to tell you how I feel before I tell you what it is I’m reacting to because that is how I make meaning from surroundings.

I want to show you my internal intricacies as I discover them myself because I don’t often know what I am thinking until I write it; until I scatter the pieces, figure out how they fit together and convert the image back into language.

I’ll never write successfully because this journey, from me to me and then to you isn’t succinct enough to stick.

It may afford relief to get out and to read, but at the end you and I, we, we may come to find that it is void of content, that there is no movement from there to here. We may find that in order to create a distance, to prove a point, a departure from this rhythm is required.

But I can’t learn to walk again, can I? My knees tilt slightly inward as I pace and I can’t remember to fix it. My awareness fades after the first block and it’s back to basics. Knees tilted.

This is my voice and I’ve had it since I was old enough to react to my own reactions.

I can’t learn to speak again, can I?

Teach me how, and I’ll find a way around it. I’ll bend it, twist it, mend it. Give me the fabric and I’ll make a quilt of leaves and flowers. I’ll reveal my layers before telling you I’m about to and leave you wondering what the hell that was about.

I’m speaking underwater, baited by the temptation that you just might understand the very simple word I am trying to learn to say. Fill my nose with water, attempting time and time again.

Fear.

Fear has kept me from breaking out of what I am good at. Here, poetic and cryptic, I don’t have to have a conclusion and the meaning can flow after. Here, a flawed plan is magic and revealing. Here, lies the warmth and comfort I’ve always needed to stand naked and raw in a crowded place where all but few passerbys walk with closed eyes.

I’ll never be a successful writer because the details and beauty of my blanket takes too long to see and I refuse to exchange it.