Sunday, June 04, 2006

Someday my prince will come

There are days when I cannot write.

Not because the words will not come, but because there are too many of them, a whole crowd, pushing, impatient, bleary eyed phrases gathered spontaneously in the mind's clearing, demanding to be heard.

Don't ask me what all these words have to do with one another, why all these lines have chosen to march side by side this way to make a poem. I don't know. I only know that they are here, a mob of language in my head, waiting to run riot.

(So many poems.

The poem about the long serpent of the night uncoiling in my living room.

The poem about the way I sip my newspaper every morning, taking my outrage with no sugar.

The poem about switching off the airconditioning and opening my window to the reality of heat, giving myself up to its longing, to its sweaty but human embrace.)

What can the mind do, faced with such an onslaught, but barricade itself? Stand helmeted and bulletproofed, pushing back these impressions, this heaving mass of feelings, letting not a single one through because to make even one exception is to lose control. Refusing to look these sentences in the eye.

And what shall we make of this silence then, except to look away? To look up to where the blessed emptiness of music expands above our heads? To that immortal, jumping skyline of jazz? To Miles, floating down on all of us, sacred as moonlight, his sound turning all the dark silhouettes of our breathing to silver? To the stars tinkling behind him, like a distant piano?

Someday my prince will come. Someday I will own not only the city but also the note that will shatter it, the skeleton key to the darkness, my passport to the blues.

And tomorrow these words will go back to where they came from.

And someday soon I will be able to write again.


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12 comments:

Anonymous said...

have been reading for blog for ages, but have never commented before - so many ppl tell you how what you write is amazing, i dont have anything new to write :)

but god, this was incredible,like something wrenched from the heart. phenomenal. wish i cd write like that! :) fantastic.

Anonymous said...

have been reading for blog for ages, but have never commented before - so many ppl tell you how what you write is amazing, i dont have anything new to write :)

but god, this was incredible,like something wrenched from the heart. phenomenal. wish i cd write like that! :) fantastic.

Anonymous said...

Fabulously written, loved it!

~N.

dazedandconfused said...

I think i like your 'Whimsy' posts the best...

ozymandiaz said...

I have a lot of words too, it's just that all of mine are
mo
no
syll
ab
ic

The Black Mamba said...

Why, but why, does my mind think of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and not jazz when I read the title of your post?!

good one.

Anonymous said...

bien sûr - "someday my prince will come".

always trippy to "reflect on royal impotence", as one of my closest friends puts it.

hatshepsut.

Falstaff said...

pseudonym: Thanks. And if you're always going to be this glowing in your compliments, do keep writing in. When you have self-esteem as low as mine, you can always use more praise.

N: Thanks

d&c: Yes, I'm fond of them myself

oz: ah

BM: no idea. again, that isn't a connection I'd considered till you mentioned it.

hatshepsut: :-). This close friend of yours wouldn't happen to be Nefertiti trying to get her own back on Miles, would it?

warya said...

this can only sound hopelessly, hopelessly trite (which is truly unfortunate), but this is exactly where i have been these last few days.
in fact i wonder if you have been watching me secretly, tapping my phones, stealing my life.
no getting away from triteness. so, for no reason other than that it seems perfect for the occasion, let's have some rufus w.
where is my master the rebel prince
who will shut all of these windows it's
these windows all around me
it's these windows who are telling me
to rid my dirty mind...
of all of its preciousness.

sorry, i can't explain this comment at all.

Anonymous said...

falstaff. close, dangerously close. but, no :). you've already heard her read rilke at audiopoetry. you can read her erstwhile blog at:

http://nipun.charityfocus.org/pavi/

she's très cool.

h.

anantha said...

it's about time you won a booker.

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