I have a new method of poetry. All you got to do is look over your notebooks. . . and think of anything that comes into your head, especially the miseries. . . . Then arrange in lines of two, three or four words each, don't bother about sentences . . .
Allen Ginsberg (1926 - 1997) US poet


Illustration: "His Masters Voice" by Francis Barraud

What do I want to say?
No words I can think of would betray
the lapse of inspiration in notion,
the black hole in imagination.
Seldom seen reads the signs:
colorless quiescence
a white canvas painted white
a flashing cursor on an empty screen
a foolscap full of blanks of thoughts
a work in progress, makes no marks.
Why numbness comes when I need it not?
When my mind's roving even when I'm not moving,
churning insides of being,
burning energy without synergy
thinking thinking thinking--what?
Nothing. No, that cannot be.
Busy little brain, we know normal:
endless moving groove,
conveyer belting mental pictures,
ideas, opinions, attitudes,
conversations, arguments, questions;
a constant whirl of motility.
So, then, what do I want to seize on,
latch onto and hurl your way?
What’s worth someone catching?

Well, matters not, when words fail--
I simply must say something, anything,
no thing worth saying!



© Helga Ross 2003, 2006