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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In recent months I have been abandoned by sadness. More accurately, I have left her behind. No more the plucking of leaves from her overgrown crown, her laurel of memory. She would not let me go – a root, tangled around an arm. My fingers planted in the bark. As a trade, I had to cut off my tongue, toss it away. Only then, could I recognise the future. Like a door out of nowhere opened into a garden, and you reading quiet under the shade. I plant the seeds of speech in the bed of my mouth. So much of my words are poisoned. Everything runs dry. I have been waiting for months for something to bloom anew. I pull a finger from the tree. Ink, sinew, sap, blood.
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.
Door shut. Silent afternoon. Mother, couch. Phone, charging, candy crushing comic reading quiet waiting. One call. No answer. Two calls. No answer. Please, come, sit down. Rare visitor appears again. He wraps his hands around fists. Bald brother standing unsteady voice trickling into phone. Answer muffled. Breakfast cold, voices unsteady, mother trickles within kitchen. Locked out. No context. I sit in silence. Shut afternoon. Quiet, rare. Couched calls, mother waiting. Cold. Cold. Cold. Cold.
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.
The flowers on my balcony bloom but shed their petals in a week. The floor is now an aftermath. I sweep up the shredded white and place them into the soil. I live so comfortably well that I only have to kill once in a while. An ant, a spider. A wayward fly. Tonight I will sleep without guilt. Tomorrow, I will wake fresh-eyed to find that the world has become the same awfulness it was last night. As angry, angry men sit tall in their highchairs of power, I will be here, eating breakfast alone in this house filled with sunlight. With each new day, I come closer and closer to accepting the reality that I cannot do anything. My words vanishing like smoke signals, nobody in miles around, a vise slowly chewing on my skull. I wake to a ocean drying itself up with a rag made of skin. I see a person walking backwards into the sea’s stomach. I think of my friends who I know have been worse off than me and remain so. This is the ugliest scene I have had to confess to recently, seeing myself in the murk of a lake but then finding their faces at the bottom of it. My own problems I drop one by one, watch them sink through the slit and mud, a small inconspicuous bubble, roughly the size of my voice, floating to the surface. Maybe there is heaven after all, but maybe God doesn’t exist. Does anyone else share this neurosis? Is it fair for me to be happy? Not sad? I feel so small and everything is just the right size to crush me. Crush me. I’m sitting alone on the bus right now, and everyone feels like an informant, watching this shuttle breeze through empty space, building after building fading away like eras. Maybe I need therapy. Maybe there isn’t any real good in this world except for what we can muster up. The spare change we’ve left in our pockets, sticking up for the little guys. Recently, I let him build a web in the corner of my room. I can clean it up, easily, but I let him make a home until it disappears. The only kindness I can afford him is that I will not be the one who does the killing.
————————————————————————-
Usually I take 5 minutes, but I didn’t time this time around. I haven’t written any poetry for a while, and I still want to stick to freewriting, but I think I’ll make it less stressful for me by removing this self-imposed rule. I’ll just write until a decent base is done, then I can come back and work on it later.
These past few months, I have been busy with life and other things, but now I have some time to devote to writing again. I’ve barely written anything submission-worthy, so I need to get back into the swing of things.
This piece is inspired by some internet drama my friends got into recently. I can’t help but feel a bit powerless, so I finally had a source to write from – anger.
words scrawled on an unknown wall last names taken without context faces as smooth as a washboard mingling in a sea of cotton buds and in the air there is capitalism that quiet + usual summer bloom as we walk down the red carpet of suburbia and middle-class living and everyone is dressed and draped in a thick viscous layer of every conceivable form of advertisement I think I will buy a watch tomorrow just because I can and I will slowly continue to die at an astounding rate at the very least I’m taking you with me to Disneyland at some point everyone loves a copyright monopoly Love I don’t know where I’m going with any of this truth be told if the truth is ever told, anyway on my eyes white cartoon gloves I feel the crowd parting to point I am a clown I am a clown I am a clown Clown world clown world clown world Nobody is worth not laughing at and nobody is worth treating seriously as we all cram ourselves into the world’s smallest clown-car and gracefully careen ourselves off every cliff
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.
head empty no thoughts head on backwards eyes staring into the past like beams of light in a thick endless fog there’s so much anxiety my brain is wrapped within like bubble wrap I close the door and leave the house with my unhappy face on I close the door and dim the lights and take off my unhappy face to put on an even unhappier face I don’t have any reason for the things I do My being, like my anxiety, is a clusterfuck It’s like rolling 3 die when you’d rather roll 2 die It’s like stepping into dogshit in your own home and you don’t own a dog sometimes I just get really really angry I feel all my expressions scrunch up like a paper ball my shoulder’s arc slowly rising like a tide and my head is empty with no thoughts but some kind of unnamed anger of sorts some would call it sociopathy but they would not understand what that means some would call it anxiety but like me they’re an armchair therapist writing down patient notes on an imaginary clipboard in the plush white chamber of their straitjacket lives spent going 9 – 5 and then some more to build the wealth of somebody else who will never work a day in the whole of their lives as the entire planet becomes a hardboiled egg and evil men wearing average faces rise into power and all good is lost and I’m just here writing about something which doesn’t make money
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.
