Somedays I can't write
Sometimes I can’t write. Not from lack of practice. Not from lack of inspiration. I’ll get a paragraph in on one page. Then I’ll open a new page and write two more paragraphs, but worse than the first. And it might go on like that for as long as I’m trying. I can make my fingers type words, but I can’t give them any meaning. You might read them and get some meaning, but I read them and get a convulsion. I get sick. I grow hairs on my knuckles and want to pound the keyboard into crumbs.
There’s no solution to it. Frustration and self pity maybe. If I feel sorry for myself long enough, maybe I’ll go back and read one of those awful paragraphs and say, “it’s not THAT bad.” But it is THAT bad. The fact that I’ve got to convince myself, means it’s worse than THAT bad. It’s ten times that bad.
So I can’t write and I’m pitiful.
For every half-decent thing I write, there are twenty-two half-horrid things written. Then on days like this, days where there are thirty windows open with four words on each page, it feels like nails though the feet. It feels like castration by chimpanzees wearing doctors masks. It’s as good as a quart of vomit. A quart of vomit with a drinking straw in it.
Today, I could rewrite, word for word, Bukowski, Hemingway, Martin Luther King’s Dream speech, and it would all be worms. It would come out gooey and lifeless. An chicken egg without a rooster. My fingers would make putty of it. And I’d hate how it reads in thirty different windows. If I could write with in Korean, or with a quill pen in big cursive letters, it would still be shit. Shit is a complement. It would be worse than that. If you had a plate of shit, you wouldn’t want this to touch your shit. You’d separate it from you shit as to not contaminate. Then you’d lose your appetite over the smell of it.
That’s how bad it can get. It can bad the way a pan gets hot on the stove. So bad that I’ve got to drop it. I’ve got to delete it from existence and then delete it again out of the trash folder. Then I have to take the entire computer and pour bleach over it. And on top of the bleach, kerosine and matches. So that I don’t smell it burning, I’ve got to shovel old socks and shoes onto the whole thing. Then bury it all. Thousands of feet down.
After all of that is done, I can open up a new page. Crack my knuckles. Stretch my neck. Light a candle. Pray to the gods of whoever. Ask the for redemption. It might take a minute or an hour, but more will pour out. More backwash. One, two, ten more paragraphs of pitiful words. It might be in perfect paragraph form. Punctuated, flowing, grammatically succinct — but bullshit. No feeling. Or the wrong feeling. And certainly no heart. If it had heart. If there was a driblet of truth to it, it might pass for something. It might pass for a folder that is never opened again. Or maybe it would survive on a napkin somewhere, or on a scratch piece of paper with other notes all around it. But there are days where I don’t even get that far.
Today shouldn’t be one of those days. There’s a dump truck of thoughts on my mind. It’s piled up and coming out my ears. It’s giving me indigestion. I’m sneezing and sweating it out. When the thoughts are that thick, I can usually make something out of them. That’s the best time. The tank is full. Give it gas and go. It’s dying to be dumped out. I can’t sleep with all those thoughts. I’d have nightmares and wake up in a panic. It would drive me insane.
Not this time. This time it’s stuck. Clogged pipes and ooze dripping from the nozzle. More blank windows open than windows with words in them. The ones with words don’t have any sense to them. They’re written in Wingdings font with funny illegible characters. There are no spaces and no need for spaces. It’s things that never needed to be written. It’s waste. Toxic waste with pink ribbon.
On days like this, I’d like a pack of matches and a dictionary as thick as my head.