i am not a monster
monsters
i am not a monster! though, earlier this week i felt like one. today i feel bleached coral and khaki. but earlier in the week, it was tentacles around the necks of the bourgeoisie. maybe. i couldn't really tell you who the bourgeoisie are these days. we are all a little confused, aren't we?
two years back, just before christmas a monster visited my body. dengue. it swam around in my liver and in my blood and i nearly died. before this event, i was continuing my poetic journey, writing poetry and loving life. since, i haven't written a single poem.
returning to poetry, wrestling the monster
i am now interested in writing poetry again. my new project will be using neovim and oviwrite for a distraction-free writing environment. this composition environment will surely have an effect on my writing. we shall see.
writing poetry, for me, is a struggle. a dyslexic with adhd is a combination that doesn't make for the best writer. but i persist. i wrestle with poetry: it is a language, a dance, a worldview, an epistemology. all of these things, but it is also a monster. elusive, mysterious, always hidden. we can think of monster as a derivative of monere, "to remind, bring to (one's) recollection, tell (of); admonish, advise, warn, instruct, teach."1 this is the poetry's greatest power: its ability to teach. simply taken in its monstrous nature, poetry really is marvellous, isn't it?
enough of the first person
enough about me and my monsters or me being a monster or not being a monster! back to squiddy pprograming:
i wanted the squid to go on forever, elephantine sub-spherical suckers
with finely serrated rings of chitin, lively tentacles circling space and emerging in the future, waving, eyes like soulful car tires, ecstatic ink clouds enveloping birch trees and bridges.
⟼ architeuthis, laura clarke
