Drowning

When it finally gives way... 4-6-2021

Drowning


Blood heated; beyond simmering
crimson bubbles splash
and bleed, running in rivelets, lines,
bleeding across the page.

Unnoticed, unheeded.
Unnecessary.
The word is the thing--
every thing: that impetuous necessity,
that urge, that instinctual hunger.

Perhaps only
other wordsmiths know
that craving, that impulse,
that all-consuming need
to be writing.

For when the syntaxes align,
when the idea bursts like an over-ripe tomato,
when seeds sprout and grow
even as they fall,
when tears of frustration run
and threaten to blur the ink,
the writer sits, hunched,
in muscle-spasming agony
that hurts so damned good
and doesn't truly matter anyhow
because the dam is broken
and those precious words gush and flow,
they stream and ripple.

Liquid words, water to a writer's soul,
rise, the tidal fury swamps
and the writer still sits, hunched,
happily drowning in the words.