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Description
Writing rhymes on paper, long hand, cheap pen
to break the iceblock, icejam, damning flood.
I set down a string of words,  non-sense.
No meaning, no rhyme, no rime, no reason,
and still the tears come.

An exercise for you,
to follow along with at home.
Cry over a sheet of paper,
until the tears make little
inkblot stains,
Blurring lines and margins.
Then write.
Your pen will catch in a tear
and make a little rip,
just when the words start flowing good.
Try it, you'll see.
Cheap paper and cheap pens,
just make the holes bigger,
especially if it is your last sheet.

Words jammed up like river ice against a bridge.
If this is allegory, what does it all mean?
When the ice finally tears the bridge away from its piers,
what will be torn away with it?

Writing is like drinking.
You stop doing it for awhile
and it gets harder not to.
Harder, until you think
about it all the time.
This little itch,
four inches behind your head.
Until one day you forget.
You wake up,
not remembering how,
still feeling the itch,
but mistaking it
for something else
some other concern,
now more important.

Getting trapped by life is easy, you just fall out
of your metaphorical boat and get carried away
by the river.  It isn't so much a trap as a flood.
Watery violence spilling over falls and whirlpools.

I feel this life as metaphor,
This chaos, this flood of
ideas and people and
images.  I feel this life
in pain, which, as metaphorical
pain, is always one step
removed from my feeling
self.  How can I drown in
a river of unfulfilled desire?
Bleed from knife cuts
of rejection?

Settling back into quiet, downstream from the torrents,
the bleeding release of the flood gates and its destruction.
The waters spread out over the breacher levies.  Carry it
all the way through, and watch the strange fish, carried
along in the flood, nibbling at the spring corn.  Carry it through
and see the peace, the victory of the flood.

Description
Writing rhymes on paper, long hand, cheap pen
to break the iceblock, icejam, damning flood.
I set down a string of words,  non-sense.
No meaning, no rhyme, no rime, no reason,
and still the tears come.

An exercise for you,
to follow along with at home.
Cry over a sheet of paper,
until the tears make little
inkblot stains,
Blurring lines and margins.
Then write.
Your pen will catch in a tear
and make a little rip,
just when the words start flowing good.
Try it, you'll see.
Cheap paper and cheap pens,
just make the holes bigger,
especially if it is your last sheet.

Words jammed up like river ice against a bridge.
If this is allegory, what does it all mean?
When the ice finally tears the bridge away from its piers,
what will be torn away with it?

Writing is like drinking.
You stop doing it for awhile
and it gets harder not to.
Harder, until you think
about it all the time.
This little itch,
four inches behind your head.
Until one day you forget.
You wake up,
not remembering how,
still feeling the itch,
but mistaking it
for something else
some other concern,
now more important.

Getting trapped by life is easy, you just fall out
of your metaphorical boat and get carried away
by the river.  It isn't so much a trap as a flood.
Watery violence spilling over falls and whirlpools.

I feel this life as metaphor,
This chaos, this flood of
ideas and people and
images.  I feel this life
in pain, which, as metaphorical
pain, is always one step
removed from my feeling
self.  How can I drown in
a river of unfulfilled desire?
Bleed from knife cuts
of rejection?

Settling back into quiet, downstream from the torrents,
the bleeding release of the flood gates and its destruction.
The waters spread out over the breacher levies.  Carry it
all the way through, and watch the strange fish, carried
along in the flood, nibbling at the spring corn.  Carry it through
and see the peace, the victory of the flood.