Blankness Abounds

Two pints of lager and a packet of ...

Sorry! Something else abounds that was. That last poem was not from ten years ago. It was probably more like two but it is the first on the pile. I have loads of others but you will be glad to hear that I have decided that the effort of posting them is too great. I may put up some of the short ones later.

This sentence had been started many times but never finished. It feels like I have the biggest discrepancy between what I want to write and what I can write. I could carry on like this, writing a series of seemingly unconnected sentences with no flow and no meaning like typing a long set of words to test an input field. But that would be pointless. It seems that finding all that poetry has made me think that I will never be able to write anything more that I consider as good as this. If just once I could finish off a poem idea and not get distracted along the way I would be happy. It is sometimes as if I knew exactly what to say but somewhere in my head, a little demon, had got in between the thought apparatus and the control of writing implement apparatus. One of the tracks on the Manhattan research CD, is a little tour through the brain of Raymond Scott and it is quite scary what images it brings to mind. I am beginning to feel anxious that this time has been wasted that I should not write anything at all unless it has some form of meaning. The clocks went back this weekend and that has added to the unreality of this time. We should be halfway through the afternoon by now and yet it is still lunchtime.

These sentences should be finished and balanced, as long or as short as they need to be to convey the meaning required. Prose can be poetry. Where is the dividing line? The line between comedy and tragedy is blurred as much. We are back to the fading in of musical technique, the changes from cacophony to euphonium that turn horror into love. My thoughts are turning to treacle, like the mind of that boy with the wine and the shed in the garden. It is difficult to keep going, to even put finger to keypad. The effort of pressing the keys is physically more difficult and with this problems of lack of strength, there is the problem of dexterity. The more I think about what I am doing here, the less accurate is my typing. The world outside the little bubble that encompasses this keyboard, this screen and this body is swimming in my eyes and there is no cure, just a descent into a black and senseless void.

A few deep breaths and the oxygen revives me. I want to collect everything I have ever written and turn it into pulp. How much clean, new paper would all that make? I have so much of it here in my hands. It would be as difficult to destroy as it would be to jump off a bridge. Throw nothing away and you will never be disappointed.