ode to road blocks

Ode to Road Blocks: a praise in poetry and prose

Be water, my friend.

Bruce Lee

 

Praise to the blocks, the stumbles and locks! They keep villains away, keep terror ad hoc. The purpose of a block is to channel, you know, a flow the consciousness doesn’t know; while laziness allows us to rock peace or pajamas. And what’s wrong with a lock? If you have the key, use it when you want. Don’t doubt that this praise is at once the cure and the problem, a distraction of thought — when you are bored, broken or blamed, just tread and kick, indeed paddle or skedaddle. We move forward at all costs, anyways. You can make it, don’t stop. As for what’s outside that halts or obstructs us, read . . .

 

. . . below, a series of praises for blocks, stumbles and locks. The element of water in our sight, for it never stops, only gathers and heals, might choke you, but never have you not feel. Each one pulls from a page in my current notebook, a page I penned in a moment of hesitation, for the distinct purpose of hurdling the hurdle.

 

Creative Blocks

Tears are poetry

Sweat drops prose

When there’s none left

Drink water and go—

 

Just write or follow

Go right ahead, don’t fool

Straight forward, you shadow!

Like glowing water, a-flow—

 

Always and alright

All right in all ways

Just spin and exhale

Siphon and intake

 

Give and inhale

Spin and expand

But whatever you do

From a wall demand—

 

Interpersonal Stumbles

Crawl, maneuver, climb

Or claw your way through

Maybe build a bridge too

One straight over and true

 

(But ever give up on love,

Keep falling in love.

Keep falling in love.

Keep falling in love.)

 

What I have got

Isn’t what you’ve got

And yet you and I

are one and the same

 

What I know to know

You don’t know you know

And yet you and I

Are the same, the same

Two but the same

 

What I want you want

And what you want I’ve got

And yet you and I

Can share, three times share

 

In the end, my friend

you and I are related

four, five, six times indeed

One and one and one the same

 

Break, literally

I’m stuck myself. Started this beast days ago and only I’ve been staring at it, at the lines — remembering once someone somewhere said art is one part creation and one part staring; makes sense if staring means editing, or admiring, or contemplating — but all this goes back to what I said in the sing-song up above: that not creating is ok, in fact part of the creative process. How else to put it?

 

The magical burst of inspiration we seek signals the brimming of creative soul in the artist. Who am I to say? I feel it right now — it is the only way I am writing right now. This post, compared to writing I do for work, is the brimming. Well fed, treated, visited, cared for, nurtured, supplied, alleviated, concentrated, while restless moves one towards output.

 

Then again, thinking about a book everyone’s talking about, titled the capital city of an island off the coast of a far eastern country, which was side-by-side held to my debut book as a book that in a good way narrows the reader — whereas my book in some way broadens the reader — and this makes me wonder, because maybe inspiration can come from debilitation, from mutilation, from drugs and evil, or both, or misdeeds pure. Not just from goodie two shoes happiness.

 

Blocks, stumbles and locks. Blah! Blast them. Jump over. Kick down. Or tinker. But above all, like above said, BRIM! Brim! BRIM! Brimmmmmm. Brim tales.

 

Love and War

Slime grime

Imma lol slap

a girl — said Cad

He goes south after

that. He is in the

air. No one can

hold him down. No one.

Except the real weight

of a million broken

hearts = all the bubbles

of a wake that his virility

made.

 

(Just do)

Away and again

the foam foams

from his chin

to skin to win

a contest called zzZ

who gets it gets it

do you get it or not

drop the rhyme dime

speed the skip dip knees

feel the deep breeze

give in to the mistakes

learn from them . . .

It’s easy not easier

to tell the truth.

 

One more, time, one more

Sometimes it helps to get over your problems (and therefore yourself) by wishing better for others. I’m not suggesting you volunteer or plant trees every time you run into a block, but boy wouldn’t that be nice for everyone else. How about, in song or in spirit, write or do something for someone else — Julia Cameron would say do something for yourself, take yourself out on a date — but what ever. In pray we heal ourselves, through pray we heal others. Time and time again. How? Like a professor of mine once put it, begin with the people closest to you, then move outward.

 

May my dog be at peace. May my roommates be at rest. May the neighbor bro be at peace. May my subway train conductor be at rest. May the grocer find peace. May my city be at rest. May Americans know peace. May the world find what it is looking for. And so on, and so on.

 

Please

Please, I need

to get my thoughts

in order. Come to

me, muse, help your

poet think of words,

sing through me

your knowledge.

— I just dropped

my collection w/ V.

He is so cool. I don’t

even know what to

say. He recommends

I watch

HIEM on language. May

he find what he is looking for.

 

Did this help? It was only to get it out. The brim, when overflowing, gets everything wet.

And we like that. A tune to tune out:

 

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