is there anything more frustrating
than having things on your mind
that slowly kill your soul
and no way to express them?

the murderous chorus of self-doubt
chimes in yet again,
with voices swelling to a dark crescendo
inside my head calling for a
halt to creativity.
"that muscle has atrophied, son.
you'll never be as good as you once were,
if you were even that good to begin with."

the voices scream for blood,
but not my blood,
for it would not even
begin to slake their thirst.
no, they wish to drain the very life
out of anything that i've ever created,
leaving nothing behind
but pale empty husks
that are only a shadow of the works
that they once were.

harder and harder it becomes to
justify putting pen to pad.
many great and inspired things
are thought of but they never
see the light of day because
the leeches are hard at work.
they do their
wicked business and drain
any life,
any originality,
any creativity,
and
any soul out of what i produce.
and what i produce is me.

when i speak,
when i write,
the final product is
a reflection of me.
a version of the physical
and psychological strata
that is my very essence
in word form.
all it takes is for you to
read them and you dig
into the heart of who
i am.
my words can carry on them
a salve to soothe the soul
or a dose of venom that
there is no cure for.
this is me.

i am embittered compassion.
i am silence before violence.
i am sacrilegious reverence.
i am my poetry.
my poetry is me.

so,
if my words were to
fade from the page,
my very existence would be
called into question.
if they were to disappear
tomorrow, there would be
no record of
of the heart, the soul,
the thoughts, or
the spirit of the living,
breathing being
that i am.

so i must press on.
on beyond the self-doubt.
on beyond the scathing criticism.
on beyond the crippling fear of mediocrity.
i must press on for one reason and
one reason alone:
my art is my life.
to become uninspired
would mean
my utter demise.

08/08/2007

Author's Note: sorry it took so long for new material but i was going through a vicious 2 year bout of writer's block. hence the subject matter of the poem. it felt alien to even put more than a sentence together the entire time but i'm over that now. hopefully people can read this and relate to the struggle of what it's like to use poetry as an outlet and then not be able to write anything worth reading.

Posted on 08/09/2007
Copyright © 2025 Marcus Jones