Trying to write a sonnet
I have been wrestling with myself tonight. I grabbed my mind and smashed it against the white, painted, cinder block dorm wall. I punched it, trying to force it into submission, but instead my brain charged me wielding a something sharp and painful. After an hour and a half we found ourselves at an impasse. I had a chokehold on my brain and was slowly choking the life out of it; it in turn gave me a headache. In the end we both gave up trying to write a sonnet. I sat at my cheap, prefabricated desk staring in space, as if the final frontier might have an extra sonnet lying around that I could call my own; finders keepers after all. But not a verse was to be found. I could not create one, and I did not find one lying around.
Now resignation is illuminated on my face by the dull glow of the laptop screen. I am tired and cranky. My eyes might smell a bit like sweat, but its hard to tell since my nose is below them. I do not know what happened today. I usually have no problem writing. I usually take sadistic pleasure in the agony of having my cranium split open; my forehead rupturing as a torrent of words pour out onto paper. Tonight was different though. My brow ripped and words and intentions started pouring out as I tried to funnel the river through a straw. I could not do it. Suddenly every word seemed trochaic and my iambic pentameter was purely monosyllabic. I found myself trying to run slowly on a galloping treadmill. I could barely write one sentence focused on iambs. At first I took it as a challenge, but after a while I became confounded, then disheartened and finally wrathfully frustrated. I literally felt that like melting.
I dont know why I cannot do this. I feel like I am being asked to speak a language that I do not know how to speak. I have never considered myself a poet. I love reading poetry; I can appreciate it and have always wished I could write it. For a moment my creative writing class gave me the hope that I also might be able to create those beautiful compositions. I was hopeful that I could take those words that I had always loved, and take them to the next level: poetry. Then my professor introduced me to the impenetrable elements of meter and rhythm. Now, I feel like Sisyphus every time I start this Sonnet.
Now resignation is illuminated on my face by the dull glow of the laptop screen. I am tired and cranky. My eyes might smell a bit like sweat, but its hard to tell since my nose is below them. I do not know what happened today. I usually have no problem writing. I usually take sadistic pleasure in the agony of having my cranium split open; my forehead rupturing as a torrent of words pour out onto paper. Tonight was different though. My brow ripped and words and intentions started pouring out as I tried to funnel the river through a straw. I could not do it. Suddenly every word seemed trochaic and my iambic pentameter was purely monosyllabic. I found myself trying to run slowly on a galloping treadmill. I could barely write one sentence focused on iambs. At first I took it as a challenge, but after a while I became confounded, then disheartened and finally wrathfully frustrated. I literally felt that like melting.
I dont know why I cannot do this. I feel like I am being asked to speak a language that I do not know how to speak. I have never considered myself a poet. I love reading poetry; I can appreciate it and have always wished I could write it. For a moment my creative writing class gave me the hope that I also might be able to create those beautiful compositions. I was hopeful that I could take those words that I had always loved, and take them to the next level: poetry. Then my professor introduced me to the impenetrable elements of meter and rhythm. Now, I feel like Sisyphus every time I start this Sonnet.
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