IN MY HEAD I AM QUITE BUSY

"A writer's mind seems to be situated partly in the solar plexus and partly in the head. ~ Ethel Wilson

Before anything else, I wish each of you a Happy New Year. I hope your holiday season was everything you wished it to be. We had a Christmas blizzard here that turned many people’s plans upside down, including mine, when airline travel was disrupted, preventing my son, who lives in California, from making his scheduled visit. Fortunately, however, he arrived just before New Year’s Eve and our Christmas celebration went forward then.

After taking a hiatus for the holiday season, I am looking forward to offering you a fresh piece of my mind each week. That is how I think of poems - not only my poems, but all poems - as a piece of the writer’s mind.

I have been asked many times: “How do you write?” “How do you decide what to write?” “Where do you get your ideas?” I never know how to answer these questions. I don’t think there is an answer. At least, not one answer. Writing poetry is weird. It can be totally random (like a flash that sparks a flame) or deeply thought-out and researched (like an issue that has gnawed at you for years and you finally just have to speak out). In either case, I suppose it is a process. Today’s poem is a bit about that.

IN MY HEAD I AM QUITE BUSY

One of the weird things
about being a writer is
how when you’re doing
most of it, it looks like
you’re doing nothing.

I spend hours working
my hardest when I am sitting
staring at the air.
It looks like I’m doing nothing,
but in my head I am quite busy.

In my head, ideas are flitting around
fireflies in a jar
sparks of brilliance hitting invisible walls,
”Haven’t done a haiku for a while…”
something short and deep
starting to count the rhythm of some words,
5-7-5
not feeling it though.
”How about a rhyming scheme?”

Even if I already know what I want
to write about - like now -
I know I want to write about contradiction,
but I am working hard at trying to
figure out what I want to say about it.

I am working at thinking and it can be exhausting.
Trying to create a thread that I can pull at
to unravel a story worth telling -
something that is relatable that I am
interested in writing and
someone out there might be
interested in reading.

This is a challenge, but sometimes magic happens
and while I’m doing all this thinking,
I find that the thoughts themselves create the thread -
like now.

I look like I am simply daydreaming
while sipping my upside-down caramel machiatto.
I am making people really uncomfortable
looking like I’m doing nothing
because they think I am staring at them.

Truth is, I don’t even seen them -
they could be a wall or a window -
I don’t see them, at least not until they move -
showing obvious discomfort
in their self-consciousness
as they stare back at me -
wondering what it is about them
that I find so utterly fascinating.

They start adjusting themselves -
checking themselves -
Is their fly zipped?
Are their breasts exposed?
Is there something on them -
a bug crawling in their hair?

And I just start typing,
though there is nothing there at all.