ugly stage

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #110

I dream of a New York apartment. Ceiling-to-
floor windows, a torrent of light. I can’t see
anything in all this optimism. Can’t make out
the shape of my own demise anymore. Can’t
think of a better way to die. My body dresses
itself and clockworks its way to work and back.
20,000 days to go before a final bed of rest.
The future is so bright – I don’t want to open my eyes.
Just burn it all. If I can’t see it, I will just have to feel it.

Freewriting Explanation: I use 5 minutes to write completely unprompted and uninterrupted, letting the words lead the way. There is no end purpose to each piece, but rather, the pieces are allowed to develop naturally in their own way. The pieces are then uploaded without edits.

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #109

Jericho Brown once said every
metaphor is a vehicle and a tenor,
bringing you somewhere you
did not know to go. Looking out
the window down sun-dressed
boulevards, the radio a soft purr
as the sand comes into view,
I find myself out there in the
light. Here, I imagine building
a home by my hands, plank by
lonely plank, each nail finding
where they belong in the wood.
A life’s purpose realised and
realised in a single act. I walk,
I don’t own a car. I have little
to my name, but my name.
Every day I want nothing more
than to get down to the work
of life. To see the wave crash
and settle. To see it to the end.

Freewriting Explanation: I use 5 minutes to write completely unprompted and uninterrupted, letting the words lead the way. There is no end purpose to each piece, but rather, the pieces are allowed to develop naturally in their own way. The pieces are then uploaded without edits.

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #108

i don’t want to read anything in the news / i don’t want to care about another crisis is a nearby country / i don’t want to hear about the latest and greatest / i don’t want to be told, wow, we have it good don’t we / i don’t want a sermon on my feed / i don’t want to be fed a sermon / i don’t want to know more about other people anymore / all my dreams are smaller now considering everything that is and will ever be / the news cycle barrels along the path of good intentions / and don’t you feel your face starting to burn / and oh don’t you feel the tip of the flame / the truth is we are already in hell / i don’t want knowledge / it has never brought me anything of joy / laughter, happiness / sure, it has helped me / at times / but often times i find that i smile at the dumbest of things / give me two dots and an underscore / give me chicken crossing road / keep my mind empty / i need no thoughts / o god give me slapstick / give me a pelican trying to eat a capybara / how it will push itself to its very limits to pursue a goal which will serve it no purpose / how it will do so simply because it wants to / unlike us /

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #107

For I

I want, and I want. I have learnt
of your body, and the way she

co-exists with mine. My tongue,
my pesky mind. My over eager

hand, my overthink. Even now
I dream of home ownership,

and then some. Maybe marriage?
Maybe a distant vision, like a

neighbour’s cat clawing at a window.
Or that one time we sat at a drive-through

and a golden retriever sped past us in a sedan.
I wonder how they’re doing now, ages later?

Time passes too slowly until I’m
with you, then it’s already gone.

We were friends, now we’re in love.
Despite the cliches, I will hold

your heart gently within my palms.
I will carry you anywhere and everywhere.

Freewriting Explanation: I use 5 minutes to write completely unprompted and uninterrupted, letting the words lead the way. There is no end purpose to each piece, but rather, the pieces are allowed to develop naturally in their own way. The pieces are then uploaded without edits.

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #106

Photo by Francesco Gallarotti on Unsplash

So it goes, most of the time; the page
turns and withers away. Those dreams
I’ve brushed past in my youth – where
did they go? Into the drawer of a dusty
office, into somebody’s waiting hand.
I have not written, truly, in months.
Where did I keep the key, where did
I fall from, where was the chalk
outline of me on the street? You’re
living, and all of a sudden, you’re
living. I am preparing for my
eventual demise, and checking
off a list; to find love, find a house,
find acceptance. I want to, so badly,
take in the world into my bosom …
to say, what a wonderful world,
what a wonderful, wonderful world …
and then I douse my head back
into reality and light it all ablaze.

Freewriting Explanation: I use 5 minutes to write completely unprompted and uninterrupted, letting the words lead the way. There is no end purpose to each piece, but rather, the pieces are allowed to develop naturally in their own way. The pieces are then uploaded without edits.

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #105

Can’t draw ink from an empty well.
Can’t speak when I mean nothing.
Don’t, then. Eyes rolling like heads,
teeth clenched shut like iron girders,
I live through life, distant. The future
is already here. She takes up too
much space and now I don’t know
how to write anymore. Nothing
flows when you’ve dug deep enough.
It’s time to get your hands around
the weeds, pull them by the roots
out of your scalp. My job is done
only because I never took it up.
And now I feel like I am going
on a long holiday, headless and
fearless, down a short road
never to be seen again.

Expression and Consequence – On Writing and Growth

Photo by Tom Rogerson on Unsplash

I pen my thoughts about picking up writing, continuing to write from a place of vulnerability, and what ramifications it might have for my work as a writer, as well as its impact on my loved ones and I. I also think about a path forward, although I cannot guarantee that I can take it.

For I.

Under the warm pillowy cover of night
my hand stirs and reaches for yours.

If we kept sleeping this way, limb to limb,
our palms the interchange of our veins,

our quiet thoughts; or the ones that
scream at us every day, as we walk

by doing nothing but existing; or those
that bark from that endless hallway

of the past, history being a wrong turn;
the point where all of us meets –

I could find myself alighting from
the train to meet you again. It will

be a crowded station, and our faces
bared, in all their audacity and

flush, which is to say that we are
simply put, in heaven: you know where

I will be. Even in our dreams, it will
be that same marble pillar, a flag

nobody in that sea can see. We will
walk there, as we always do,

to feel our hearts’ malfunction;
the long intake of air, drawing it

into our lungs – to nest as closely as
one can to the heart without harming it.

I carry this thought with my blood.
I send it to my palms, and squeeze.

Freewriting Explanation: Every day, Valen shall use 5 minutes to write completely unprompted and uninterrupted, letting the words lead the way. There is no end purpose to each piece, but rather, the pieces are allowed to develop naturally in their own way. The pieces are then uploaded without edits.

FOOTNOTES ON FILLING

After “footnotes on falling” by Joshua Ip. Written for the #StayHomeStayLit2020 campaign.

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #103

Rizon Parein and Mark Slein (NY). https://unsplash.com/photos/7Kaa-cmmg5Y

These thoughts whisk themselves
in the bowl of my skull: a quiet
righteousness, pacing restless in
its room, its hands grabbing onto
nothing; how my tongue is slowly
curling backwards onto itself;
my voice falling into the pit of
my throat. There is so much
I can do little about that I wish
I were God. I wish I were powerful.
Poetry is always a desire for control,
and its manifestation. I want it.
I want it. This is the one true holy word,
etched between every disc in our spine.
If poetry is control then these words
are a room. I’ve shut the doors,
shuttered the windows. The world
of the everyday is lost in here –
all in here is but theoretical,
with no rules for grammar
but the ones we choose to make do.
In this room there will be no anger,
no riling of fists against the beating
beating beating heart of capitalism,
no gutter punch drunk pulsing pulsing pulsing
people who only set themselves up for disappointment.
To have control is to relinquish it all,
Righteousness muses, his footsteps
having worn a line into the hardwood.
I cannot do anything and I need to accept that.
I need to, but I am working on that
I swear I swear I swear I swear.
The world is awful and I am learning to be awful too
but I am failing. My hands raise themselves
against nothing. I cannot avert my eyes.
I want it. I need it. I swear I swear I swear.

Freewriting Explanation: Every day, Valen shall use 5 minutes to write completely unprompted and uninterrupted, letting the words lead the way. There is no end purpose to each piece, but rather, the pieces are allowed to develop naturally in their own way. The pieces are then uploaded without edits.