Wanting the Worst of my Memories

I've been on a bit of a poetic hiatus since the pandemic went into full swing. That's nearly 3 years without writing anything substantial in the genre I've considered the greatest part of me. Being a poet was once something I accepted as a fact of my life, I'm left-handed, I'm my mother's child, I'm alive, and I'm a poet. But what is a poet that doesn't produce poetry?

This hiatus is not for a lack of trying. I've written pages and pages of half-formed lines and abandoned stanzas, but not a single time did my work coalesce into the whole piece I know a poem to be. Instead, I felt like I was collaging with my own greatest hits. Every image, every line, it all felt like I was recycling my own voice into something much much worse.

Eventually, I cut my losses and started investing my time into other types of writing that weren't so personal to me. I wrote reviews. I got into journalism. I wrote anything that was about things outside of myself. I stopped looking too close in the mirror. I knew all the pieces of me that were left were just the worst parts of my memories waiting to look back at me. I've been meaning to get a therapist. I know there's no medication that can remake me into something that isn't half dead or at war with itself. But like anything else, it got pushed to the back burner in life and I grew complacent in my new reality.

I always imagined my return to poetry would be resplendent. A sign I was getting better and returning to myself with celebratory rebirth. These imaginings were as unrealistic as they were purposely blind. My block from poetry was not for a lack of material within myself, it was a refusal to acknowledge the parts of myself that I wanted to pretend didn't exist. I was entirely beholden to my own hypocrisy. In the same breath that I claimed to be ignorant of the moral values that plagued others, I would then suppress my own memories to the point of persistent nightmares because I couldn't acknowledge that I might desire something that I knew was wrong. I encased myself in shame. I can still feel it pressing in on me all the time and I've felt it turn to panic whenever I have to confront the parts of myself I've deemed too unsavory.

To people uninterested or unfamiliar with poetry, especially my own poetry, this may all seem rather melodramatic. And it is, it's ridiculous and melodramatic that I've willingly let my mind rot under the pretense of healing. As though denial has ever been a successful method for anyone dealing with distress. Poetry used to be how I processed the parts of my memory that felt too big for my body. It was shameless and gross and without restraint. I've even used most of those words in my older work. They've been staring back at me every time I reminisce on what used to be.

I let poetry become too sacred, too presentational. My poetry became about workshops and submissions and turning the things I've processed into art. But what about the things that don't get processed? What about the memories that piled up, infecting the rest of me with their sentiment?

With all that preamble in order, here's a draft of my newest poem. It's not revised or tight or even very complex in its imagery. However, it is written without fear of giving too much away, without the paranoia that some faceless reader may see too much of me and know what I am.

The Way I Loved You

(The Unspoken Version)

When the quiet came there was no fighting.

No one to hold the line as the waves crashed

for the last time. I tried to scream to the tide

call her back to me. But the still air

it filled my throat and soothed me

into a broken complacency.

The quiet has robbed me

of the music in my mind.

The beat of my body

against the sand,

silent under the sun.

When the quiet came I stopped.

How could I continue under

the weight of my own rest?

How could I chase after other lovers

who left me, when I didn’t hear them go?

Time couldn’t pass if the sand never fell through the hourglass.

The quiet began to strip me,

my memories given with no receiver.

Bare and still is how the quiet kept me,

breath even, mouth open and dry.

This is how you would find me.

The quiet taught me not to fear

but even without memory, I withdrew

from the gaze of you and your hands.

The quiet taught me not to desire

but you are an inevitable boom,

sobs finally breaking free.

Won’t you leave me?

Let the quiet keep me.

I can’t want you

to scream.

The quiet has soothed me, saved me

from my own worst impulses but what

if I’d rather drown in cacophony? Call you

back to me. What if I want you

to beat me like you used to?

Make music out of me till I remember

the way I sound repeating your name.

Fill my ears with the rush of the sea

flooding against me till there’s no room

for the quiet to abandon me in disgust

for all that I desire in spite of knowing better.

Who knows if this is the beginning of my age of poetry, or if this whole spiral was my mind's desperate attempt to procrastinate the work that I know I should be getting done. All I know is I wrote something and it made me feel alive. Catharsis is a hell of a drug. While writing all this out I've had the same playlist on loop. Some of the songs are very directly recognizable influences on my poem, others less so, but all of them feel important to the way I feel right now. If that's something that may be interesting to you, I've included the songs below.

Thank you to anyone who actually took the time to read all of this. I'm sure whatever comes next will surprise even me.