Don't Think, Just Write

I took a writing class in Seattle taught by Daemond Arrindell, Seattle's Slam Master and a generally wonderful person. Class after class, Daemond would give us prompts to inspire our writing but remind us to just let the pen take control. No worrying about what our words would sound like later. No thinking. No crossing out words. No idle pens. It was poetry boot camp.

Armored with a homework prompt from Daemond, I recruited J Searns, a fellow aspiring poet and generally wonderful person, to set up a two-person writing circle outside El Diablo cafe in Queen Anne. Channeling the instructions from Daemond, we set an alarm to limit the writing, quickly glanced at the prompt and..just..wrote.

The product? While normally these writings turn out to be a brain dump that need serious editing later, this afternoon actually produced a poem that has gone through little edits and seen the stage many times since it's conception. Enjoy & Comment!

Hunger

The pit in my knees that lets me know I’m weak for you

Allows me to rise and face the day

I want nothing but this moment

Want only to open the door and find you clumsy on the bed

Engrossed in my gaze

Entangled in my sheets

Enveloped in my kiss

In love

With the sun and stars that we plucked from the sky to erase this 24 hour cycle we call day

To just be.

We take this moment and swish it in our glass

Hold it on our tongues

Promising our memories that we will never forget this.

My fingers play an empty tune on the invisible harp strings that lead to the hollow after-life of your ego.

My hands, slender but strong, peel you open like a grapefruit until you are exposed.

And I taste the sweet juice of what lies underneath.

We know that this is brief.

But we would sacrifice excitement if the universe had not been jealous enough of this moment to steal it away from us.

We know that time

Like the

Fast forward, playback, mute, slow faster faster slow of this biography is selfish

And we spend hours remembering to remember

To hold on

To never forget

To always always remember

To breath in and out

Breath it all in until

It’s gone

Until time is the only witness to what this is

To the brief but immortal moment where the world forgot about history and just created this

Creation.

I wonder what that first bite of apple tasted like.

If Eve’s aching middle left her doubled over like elephants—too burdened with the weight of memory to stand proud and strong, defiant.

A woman

Empty in the wake of a man who created her

You etched me out of nothing

And now to nothing I return

Vacant like hope

Blank like my gaze searching for your eyes, finding only sockets

Empty like your side of the bed.

Hollow like the promises we made to always be this moment.