Pigs On A Pond Five Stories Up

I’m never really sure where the idea that sparks a poem or a short story comes from. I tend to get “hits” or impressions and then leave the flow alone. Let the words dance to their own music as it is. This makes for some strange connections.

For example the other day I was sitting on the Stone Bench staring at nothing of great import when my ankle starts to itch. I’m thinking an army of angry mosquitos recently got into our bedroom at night because my ankles are littered with bites - little fuckers. So I’m itching my ankle and it feels good at first, that blissful satiation. What I can only imagine is similar, roughly, to what a drunk might feel as she takes a healthy swallow of Gin after being deprived of alcohol for a day. But then it starts to hurt, the itching, because I’m peeling off layers of skin. Not good.

So I stop itching even though I don’t want to. This incident inspires a thought-poem and I pick up my journal and start at it. Some muck about an itchy heart and scratching. But now I’m in the words. They’re at a full gallop and my pen is playing catch up. Within no time I’m onto a thought-poem about kids playing marbles. Why? Don’t know.

And then a rather large fish jumps outta the Lake-Pond and I’m wailing on about “is the fish jumping out of the pond or the pond jumping out of the fish.” Which runs its course and all the sudden I’m five stories up “where she’s left my balls.” Why? Again, don’t know, but I follow along thinking it’s coming from somewhere so I might as well act as the translator of it all.

Really, the point isn’t is any of this “good.” It’s all rough and would take some considerable massaging to sniff a first draft. I’m sure if I stopped to think about it as it was happening -”is this any good” - the train would wreck. The point isn’t is it good, or bad. The point is to let it happen - to not start out with prefabricated ranch houses but to start out with nothing and let some shit bubble up.

I ended that particular Stone Bench session with a poem about a pig. Why? No clue. Here it is, cleaned up a little but still a zygote of a thought-poem.

Pig Round

I had a pig ask me once,
“Am I really ugly?”
He nudged in another one before I could respond.
“Am I really that gross?”

“Well, you see,” I began.
To which the pig friend interrupted,
“You’re the philosopher sort,
aren’t you?”

“I tend towards obtuse,” I replied.
“Nevermind,” said my porcine fellow.
“I’ll ask the sheep.”

He wandered.
Leaving me to wonder if he
was speaking plurally
or singularly.

Upon his return he told me,
seemingly somewhere between
despondent
and resigned,
“Apparently it depends.”

To which I responded,
“My point exactly.”

Post Tags: creativity + fish + pigs + poems + Poetry + ponds + stone-bench // Subscribe // Bookmark