Friday, January 05, 2007

Why I Write

To escape ghosts.

Only the literary present contains antidotes to the poisoned past.

Nightly mocking shadows scream at me, unsolved puzzles demanding solution.
Ancient sadness crying out for surcease. Old wounds, betrayals, and worst of all, inadequacies, are replayed and attacked. 'What might have been...' 'If only I had been...' Spinning circular, they cry for a linear end.

Finally, in broad daylight, poised at my desk, I write; and find a moment's peace...until, hundreds or thousands of words later, by day's end, the sun, falling again, brings night, hated quiet, and the re-awakening of those old ghosts.

I quiet them before sleep with the promise of tomorrow's writing. They are contecnt...but only for a moment. They emerge again in sleep, a pack of baying wolves. A new form, but the howling is frighteningly the same.