Sanctum
I sat
down with Langston today hoping that he would help me find my way. As I pulled
myself through the pages of his revelations I still walked away with more
questions than answers. So again I made my way to the small corner of the book
store where poets die to go, and some go to die, and tried to relate my story
to the ones already told by Zora, Emily, Nikki, Ralph, Maya and hell, even
Tupac…Hey this is our confessional, we don’t judge here. Instead we sit on the shelf waiting for our
hearts to be massaged as fingertips caress turning pages. We hold our breath as
eyes dance across our joy and pain because our prayer is never that you like
it, but that you “get it”. We hope that you understand the moment…the
millisecond that we were experiencing and we fear death of our work if it’s
lost in translation. But no matter what we start writing “Where the sidewalk ends”
and keep going ‘til we get “tears for water”.
It’s a
long journey of highs and lows, but poetry happens every day and with every
breath that we take, so the pen keeps feeling long after the showcase is over
and the spotlight dims. And even though our words may never see the light of
day or grace the shelves of our quiet confessional, we wake from happy slumbers
in the late nights and early mornings jarred by a rhythm, rhyme or line. We
toss and turn as poems write themselves and we are called to get them on paper
before they disappear into the darkness of a much needed night of rest. It’s
not notoriety that drives us to describe the visions we are given. We follow
the words, the “how to” guides for survival that always seem to say the right
thing.
No it’s
not fortune or fame that leads us to that quiet place of predetermined endings
and new beginnings. That cozy corner of life and death that both inspires and
burdens, it simply is who we are and we run back to our old friends that suffer
the same weight of greatness that every poet scours the thesaurus to describe.
See it’s not that small corner carved out to pay tribute to the poets’ spirit
that give us the peace we seek, it is when a haunting verse is manifested with
pen and ink.