Miniatures

I cannot compare it to coming down off a high, since I don't partake of illegal substances, ever, not once, no sir, move along officer, but the intellectual shift from writing a short story novella back to my usual medium of poetry felt quite odd. It wasn't emptiness or a feeling of being unfulfilled, because the craft required for each is completely different, nor was it the sense of sitting in an emotional decompression chamber after having swam in a deep, gently undulating ocean, une grande symphonie contre la musique de chambre, a vital, constantly moving current. Each has something to say, and in the only way it naturally can.

So, after writing my first one in months, a few discarded attempts interrupting the story along its tortured creation notwithstanding, I stared at the finished piece lying dormant in the notebook. I cannot fathom how anyone can create on a computer screen - I say while typing this post - when the physical process of putting a pen or pencil to paper, the curves of each stroke gently pressing on the pulp, leaving its mark the way a finger tracing a word or a picture forms a ghostly impression on your lover's skin, the tactile nature of pulling something from seemingly nothing with your own hands, feels so much more immediate, alive, personal. It matters.

But did this poem matter? I'm never satisfied with my work, as I imagine most anyone, whether a genius, or in my case, a textbook mediocre writer, would be, yet something was off, askew. It felt wrong in a way I could not explain. The words sat there, motionless, a pieced together Frankenstein still waiting for its electrical jolt. On those rare occasions when the planets align and the moon is blushing, I'll write something that on a first reading strikes me in my own narrow imagination as quite moving, conveying a true feeling of yearning, of the erotic, of sadness. The test comes with later readings when it still, surprisingly, seems fresh. How did I come up with that? Yet this was flat, stale, which wouldn't have been out of the ordinary considering the fact that I hadn't finished anything for nearly half a year, but once you learn to ride a bike...

A solitary activity, trudging through banality as commonplace as cool drops windswept onto your face are, creeping into your eyes as you pedal through a chill autumn mist. Writing a poem to successfully recreate an emotional imprint using human language is nigh impossible. As with moving from French to English, Italian to Spanish, Russian to Greek, something is lost in the translation. For even the masters can never paint a true representation of what playfully gnaws or brutally devours them within the limited confines of a collection of words. They can approach greater heights than us mere mortals, to be sure, but it remains nothing more than a replica. For myself, I'd sooner have success, after being dropped in the middle of Paris, of charming so well the natives, who conveniently ignore my lack of citizenship, with my Franglais that they elect me mayor than I would with explaining the exact emotions that I felt, that demanded I write them out.

I tried to animate the body, but my feeble attempts resulted in silence. The lines couldn't be improved any further beyond their initial birth. They would remain weak, vulnerable to the predators, the mob of a million better pieces that I've read, that remain unread or, I hoped, yet to be created by my own head and heart. Everything has to die at some point. I just didn't expect it to be so soon. Waiting for a stroke of lightning to make its rare, inspirational appearance, I put the pen back to the paper and began to fabricate another series of curves and lines that I hope will become a replica worth revisiting.