Artist Hysteria

July 15, 2011

I named it: this thing called artist hysteria. That's what I kept thinking as I walked in the woods this morning.  I panic. I go over my words, exhausted, at the end of the night. My belief is, if I don't create something brilliant, someone will take this all away from me. This is ludicrous. But it's real and it usually happens when I've been away from Poet mind or Novel mind or any time of creative mind, as I have been, to get make some money. I scramble to get back in. I try and meditate and nothing happens. I don't reach deep places; my breath is shallow. I read some other people's poetry. I sniff at their deep worlds. I fumble with familiar words. Come up short. Keep at it, you moron, Ego says. So I do, I start to put words together and the hysteria dissolves.

52. I Sit Behind the Buddha

I sit behind the Buddha,

but he has grown thin.

I sit below the tree of enlightenment,

but the leaves have yellowed.

Mind has a hard shell, and one hole

for a writhing worm.

Breath is a shallow wave.

Bits of weed. Fish flee.

The truth is a prayer of

mourning.

The frayed threads, the shards;

I weep for those lost gems.

Who will find the relics?

Will they have gloved hands?

With they have lungs filled

with the flutter of sparrows?

Will they stop to breathe

the crepuscular spill?

Weep for the waves that bash their

heads on the rocks?

Here, another page. Another

     winged

                thing.

Tomorrow will be a tomb of

riddles, the afterlife

the aroma of the virgin phlox.

Sit sweetly. Stow nothing

in your pocket. Hold loosely

the Poet's words,

allow them to dangle

in

   your

         hand

                 like a

                        kite's string.