It’s remarkably cleansing, somehow, to see a blank document splay its white face across the monitor before you. Refreshing. Invigorating. Yes, I see you, fragment-indicating wavy-green lines. I will disregard you as usual.


It’s calming, relaxing, serene, tranquil, any number of synonyms… there’s no essay to be typed out, no numbers to run through your mind.


No.


Your only worry is to spread your feelings out across the white. And doing so is relieving, even if you haven’t said a coherent thing at the end, even if you reread unwillingly and a smirk tugs at your lip and you realize there’s no good reason for this, except that you recognize yourself, purely and candidly there in those meaningless run-ons and fragments assembling, dissembling, masquerading as thoughts.


It’s an exquisitely simple form of relief, this stream of consciousness. Not art, though some would claim. Well, definitely not mine. Perhaps others may streamline their thoughts in poetry, but not me. Never me. I much prefer my inner feelings to infer based upon rhyme and rhythm of others, giants whose shoulders I can perch upon, glance at a distance and be gone.


I want to live and I want to love
I want to write something that I might be ashamed of

Fame fame fickle fame
Plagiarize mine in vain
Because no matter the tune or the words
It’s all been heard a hundred times it’s all been heard

Oh

Art, art, lethal arts
Dagger-sprung from countless hearts
Because how does art appear but from pain
from crumbling salt bridges in the rain