Windows

The windows are broken. I have seen the glass in them shatter and speed towards me like kamikaze butterflies high on buckshot. I have never climbed through them, or opened them. Hoop! I have hollered though their holes—Hoo! Wah! but there is not enough noise to make the blood flow. The limp muscle cannot dare the windows. Still I cling to myself like old cobwebs. My bones are hollow, play them like xylophones. Work on me, stretch me across a rack as a canvas so that I cannot breathe for the tension of the potential. The windows’ teeth gleam. They are waiting.

Obstructions

Just finished watching The Five Obstructions by Lars von Trier and Jorgen Leth. An interesting film in a few ways, but it definitely succeeded in making me think about two things:

1.) How incredibly nervous Lars von Trier makes me.

2.) How far and how hard would I/am I willing to be pushed for art?

I don't have an answer for that second one, but I think it's pretty damn important. I accept that in many (most? all?) cases, some degree of externally imposed hard-assery is required. This is why I am grateful when teachers, friends, etc. critique my work--I can't do it myself, at least not past a certain point. But just how much pushing, how much grinding their work into the ground, is beneficial? If you push the artist past the edge, does he transcend, or just fall over? This question lingers eternally in the process of creativity, so I will skim past this general form and ask "what about me?" Can I be encouraged to progess, tempted with a carrot, or do they have to get out the stick?

As I grope along developing my writing, I (however cringingly) am more and more inclined to opt for the latter. I need whatever artificial pride I have taken from me and crushed into tiny little pieces. I need to have my best piece vivisected while I watch, so that I may better understand its organs. Even at my harshest, I cannot tear what I have to shreds as must be done. I want it to be done, so I can stitch them back up. I need a crazy Rocky-esque writing training montage.

That being said, encouragement (without the unfortunately usual high fructose corn syrup sweetness) is a powerful tool in the right hands. But it, too, needs to be applied externally, productively. Otherwise I just look like a crazy person.

I can't do this alone, but damned if I'm going to just hand my pride over. That would defeat the entire point.

I Present to You Haiku

Assorted haiku from my poetry journal. Some of these I like better than others, but the worst I have spared you. I enjoy the form; I am a fan of snapshots.

---------------

The grumbling saw cuts

clean through the budding tree branch

white like bloodless flesh

Woken by a yowl

and porcelain shattering.

The cats are hungry.

Slide swish slice, swish slice--

Endless monotony of

the paper cutter.

My morning pills look

like bright-colored rabbit turd.

I will not take them.

Leaf blowers snarl

and roar, chasing fallen leaves

and deafening me.

The girls are wearing

little but miles of bare leg.

It must be summer.

I did not mean to

crush the magnolia petal.

Its body bleeds brown.

We have overslept

and missed all of everything--

The morning can wait.

Today turned up a

centipede in the garden,

unearthly unearthed.