back

it only rushes to my head.

2023-08-15

2 minute read

I've been struggling with a thing at work. It's weird to be stuck on problems I've set for myself. This happens all the time with everything I do. so be it

I've wanted to write more poetry lately. I've been crying a lot lately, maybe it's related.

Today I found out a friend passed away. I'm not sure how to process it. We had been out of touch for a while, but were close when I was young. What am I even processing? A feeling? A lifetime? Tomorrow I have to get up and go to work. Who can I tell?

It becomes more real when I say it out loud, or imagine saying it. I don't want to cry at work.

I felt down all day, but for my own deluded reasons. I learnt the news this evening.

I've started reading the Rilke poems, I found this one by chance, flicking through:

the suicides song

The Suicide's Song by Rainer Maria Rilke translated by Edward Snow

  1. All right: just one second more.
  2. So once again they cut
  3. my rope.
  4. The other day I was so close:
  5. I could feel bits of eternity
  6. in my intestines.
  8. They hold the spoon out to me,
  9. this spoon of life.
  10. No, I will not and I will no longer,
  11. let me vomit up myself.
  13. I know that life is fine and good
  14. and the world is a full pot,
  15. but it doesn't get into my blood,
  16. it only rushes to my head.
  18. Others it nourishes, me it makes sick;
  19. try to grasp: some people just can't stand it.
  20. For at least a thousand years now
  21. I'll have to diet.

why write

I've been thinking about why I want to write poetry. I was thinking for a long time that it didn't come to me naturally. I didn't have the gift, the drive, the urge. I don't think it's that any more. Words are all I have to raise up, to pull down temples in my mind.

There’s a kind of defeat that resembles victory.
There’s a temple raised up only in the mind

and another to be pulled down
in dream, arms wrapped around massive pillars
to tug and shatter the roof on guzzling lords.
Not by his arms, not by his gouty hands.

But the phoenix spark sleeps in ash.

I hope I can do with poetry what I'm doing here, working out my thoughts by writing them down. Facing the humiliation of dull words and ideas, in order to approach myself with honesty.

listening to

So You Are Tired - Sufjan Stevens

questions