Why Do I Bother Writing Poetry When It Doesn’t Really Matter?

April is National Poetry Month

The world is on fire and a poem is not a garden hose. But it can be a cistern, a wading pool, a cool glass of water to soothe us between our bouts of fire duty.

“Fear is the mind killer,” begins the Bene Gesserit “Litany Against Fear” from the Dune series. This litany is a favorite of mine, and I have often silently chanted it to myself while undergoing medical procedures.

Depression is the soul killer. This is my own personal litany. As someone who has struggled with depression since my earliest memory, I understand that surrendering to the darkness means the ending of all things. If I allow it to run its course, like a bout of stomach flu, better days lie ahead. While sick with the flu, one can only treat the symptoms – drink liquids, rest, eat bland food. So it is with depression, my flu of the spirit. I drink tea, I bundle myself in warm blankets, and I write. Writing seems to be the most necessary of all treatments.

The secret is to write without evaluating the words while the work is in progress. If I try to edit too soon, depression hisses like a snake in my ear, constricting my throat, whispering, “This is garbage. Burn everything now!”

I must confess I have given in to temptation and destroyed portions of my work in fits of despair, but I have since promised myself to read my work three times before I pass judgement. You see, I suffer from a condition I refer to as “Schrodinger’s Editor.” This means that my writing is both brilliant and garbage, until I read it again. My mood at the time will tell me which judgement is correct. I have a WIP folder on my computer where I store all of the poems I’m still evaluating. Rather than disappearing into the digital trash bin, they can live in the forever limbo of WIP.

What I have discovered on these reviews is that the lower my mood at the time of writing, the better the poem. Of course, I have rendered some good work while in a good mood, but those dark little darlings who curl in the shadows and hum a low note call to me with an allure that I cannot find elsewhere. I coax them like stray kittens into my pen, onto the page, and into the world as twilight portraits.

And so, this being National Poetry Month, I will be sharing some of my recently published poems here with you in a “Poem of the Day” style. Prepare to read some bad poetry, or good, you get to be Schrodinger here. I’m just the cat.

If I can actually get my entire brain in one bucket, these poems will appear in a collection I’m putting together later this year. It might even get published by an actual press. In that vein, I present what may be the opening poem in the book.

Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash

Forward

By Dawn Levitt

Before you is a looking glass,
a mirror to my soul.
Do you have the nerves of steel
to walk this path alone?

Between these covers lurk the beasts
that hunt me in the night.
They stalk, they prowl, they rape my soul,
and hide me from the light.

They rip at my heart, blood pours out,
black ink upon the page.
I scream and wail and hurl vile words.
I sob in futile rage.

Here you hold my suit of armor,
paper to shield my soul.
Take these words and read them aloud.
Attempt to make me whole.

Incantations of arcane words –
Speak Wolfsbane off your tongue.
Perhaps my heart will heal itself
when this dark night is done.

When the blackness fades to morn and
the Moon has run her course,
if my frail heart survives this fray,
by sunrise I’ll be yours.