scrawl, scrawl, crack

how can I learn to be a writer?

what can I do with this throb in my chest

this infinite knowledge in my soul of

how to create worlds within the mind

and paint experiences out in the beyond

before me, where swords clash and lovers

lay and smiles are shared while blood is

sprayed; I should derive inspiration from

the real world, and I do, but the sadness

it brings splits my soul back in two

and once again I am left knowing nothing

not what to say, nor not what to do

what does it mean to be a writer?

I feel my mind caving sometimes,

splitting sides,

a tug of war of thematic shrines

a heated quarrel between guilt and time

reality nips at my chin like an ice cold wave

waiting to crash on the shore; I cave

I hide in myself all the same as a slave

to the expectations of the world where I stay

down, hide my face, cast my ideas in

shadow, convince myself writing for fun

is just shallow, I’m wasting my time here,

I’m sinking, I’m narrow in mind and in spirit

and talent is seeping from me like a wound

as I speak and I spiral, the stories beneath

me are falling away, and I grasp for them

desperately, hoping to find a piece of me

as restlessly as I had written those parts

of me down and away, where they stayed

and they stayed unread and unrestrained

in my notebooks, long gone now,

my own hands drip with pain of the untold and the damned

for I told myself if they saw the light of day

I would never good enough to stand

on my own as a writer, but what is a writer?

ink seeps from my fingertips, an indigo

free fall, smearing my face like bloodstains

staining my walls like a madman’s abode

I see stories everywhere, whether my

hands are still or twitching with

readiness, whether other things are

expected of me or not

my brain whirrs to create even when I close my eyes alone

and feel the waves of emotion taking me away from this place

am I still welcome?

should these hands close around my own neck

if I cannot create at every time, at every turn, at every crevice of my own life?

whose permission am I waiting for even now to call myself what I am?

I fear a return to form like a ghost of my own intelligence, a fragment of my old talent,

if it were ever such a solid thing, a culminated fact,

or perhaps just another lie and loss,

another long lost trial and error course of attempt, attempt, attempt

another golden-flecked delusion of the past

still—I am a writer, and I write now, and I write always

even if I write in fragments, once a day, once the night, once in a world within worlds

uselessly and ceaselessly

and I will not stop until I hold in my hands a piece of myself I can fit into my heart and call my home, my own

and then maybe I will see that all else was not a means to an end; all else was not a waste

but rather a path paved to a beautifully desolate destination

—

Thank you so much for reading! ❤️

I’m sorry I haven’t been very active lately on here. Life got to me a bit, and honestly, both internally and externally, it’s been easy to feel pretty down and nihilistic these days, which makes writing for fun a challenge. When writing and creating starts feeling like a burden, I get afraid because of how important it is to me, if that makes sense. I tried to culminate some of my stresses surrounding that into this quick little poem, and I hope at least some of it might connect with you guys as writers yourselves :)