Poem: Writer's Block

First of all, let me apologize for not posting on Wednesday, and secondly, for this not being the follow up video game post. I've been swamped with work and other obligations and haven't been able to focus on putting together coherent ideas. Also, there is a current discussion in the gaming community (namely, must games have an easy mode if they are story-focused?) that I think I ought to address in my post. That being said, the poor little post hasn't been written yet. In the meantime, please enjoy this poem I wrote a few months back.

Writer’s Block

Writer's block doesn't exist,

people say.

It isn't a thing,

isn't real.

You're just not working hard enough,

trying hard enough.

Writing hard enough,

I suppose.

But how does one write hard,

or harder?

Anyway,

since writer's block doesn't exist,

I wonder what it is,

that gnawing at our frazzled brains—

like an animate scribble from a pen

when you want to check if it has enough ink—

that just won't let us focus.

What is that that hum, that buzz,

that need to swing our arms and walk

and walk and walk and walk

and maybe never come back?

Since writer's block doesn't exist,

it can't be that nameless anxiety

over not measuring up to our past selves,

who once wrote often, all the time,

and easily, at that.

It can't be that nagging wonder

if our spark has been pinched out

by cold white pages,

stretching on infinitum

to the future,

forever.

Since writer's block doesn't exist,

we can't use it to describe

when our heads drown in a sleepy miasma

of sore joints and undiagnosed depression,

when we'd rather sleep and dream

telling stories to ourselves in the quiet,

instead of typing them out

with aching wrists

and piercing neck pain

and watering eyes

and clouded minds.

Since writer's block doesn't exist,

what is it that sits in the path that leads

from a series of logical plot points

to that final confrontation,

the crescendoing climax or soft denouement?

That beast, fat and dumb,

which offers no help whatsoever,

except to crawl monster-like across the page

catching its tar-black flesh

on hastily patched plot-holes,

tearing them up in its wake.

Since writer's block doesn't exist,

it can't be those crossroads we come to

where sits a ragged figure,

somehow both urchin and crone,

who sings a song of two equally delicious

and devastating fates

depending on which road our characters take.

The figure seems kindly, but gives off a feeling

that whichever way we choose

will be a one-way trip.

Since writer's block doesn't exist,

what’s to stop us from pouring out a novel

in a few months? A week?

Why not a day?

Nothing but those nameless Things

that haunt our dark imaginations,

whispering Things that shouldn't be spoken of

in front of other writers.

“I'm tired.”

“I don't know where to go from here.”

“There's something off,

and I don't know what it is.”

“It's hard to start things.”

“It's hard to end them.”

“I don't know what's wrong with me”

I don't know what's wrong with me.

I don't know...

because writer's block doesn't exist,

but for some reason,

I still can't bring myself to write.