A Day in the Life of a Writer

It’s early. 7:15 early and there’s a Mexican man making a noise with his lawn mower outside my window. I haven’t slept in days. I’ve been trying to write a book. It’s not working out. The ideas that I have only last three sentences. I’m on my third cup of coffee. There is a stale taste of sleep and caffeine and disgust rolling around on my tongue. It makes me gag. Why is it so hard to come up with ideas? I turn the TV on. Nothing good is showing. I play some music. It puts me in a bad mood. I put on some other music. I’m feeling better now. I write a letter to my non-existent dog.

Dear non-existent dog

I wonder if I need you just yet. Sometimes I feel like I do and then sometimes I think you’ll just be an unnecessary responsibility. Sometimes I like to sleep in. What if on the day that I want to sleep in, your bowels decide to move early and I don’t want get up to take you outside, would you just poop on my floor? What if some days I’m too lazy to walk you? Would you just lie on the ground and get fat and then never be able to walk again? What if I forget to feed you one day? Would you die of starvation? These are the things that keep me awake at night. On the other hand, I really think I could do with a companion right now. It’s awfully lonely in my room on the weekends. Sometimes I make friends with a bottle of red wine really easily and then I don’t feel so alone. Could I be friends with a bottle of red wine for the rest of my life? Quite possible, though I might die before I reach my expiration date. Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I don’t have you yet because I don’t know if I’m ready or not. That could also be the reason why I don’t have a husband or a boyfriend for that matter. It is a pity that I’m not a cat person because I don’t think it’s legal to have a hundred dogs in your apartment when you’re old. I hope we’ll meet soon.

With love,
your future best friend

After writing a letter to my non-existent dog I feel rather pathetic. I get over it. I get lunch. I think about working out. I get over it. I sit down at my desk. It’s 2:00pm. I can’t believe I just let the time pass by like that. I’m disappointed. It’s 4:00pm. I’m still disappointed. I’ve wasted two hours being disappointed. There’s a spider on my wall. I watch it. I get a drink. The spider’s gone. I write a letter to the spider.

Dear Spider

I hope that your visit was just casual and that you’re not going to ravage me in my sleep tonight. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t.

Thanks
the human

I fall asleep.

Don’t Hear, Listen

The beat flows through me

like purple honey

every single time it drops

an explosion

puts my soul in motion

I play it

pray 

it never stops

I hold it close to me

feel reverberations

of magic-made creations

how they’re supposed to be

deep down in the bottom of my shoe

where my sole is

tap tap tap

the rhythm right through me

my mark is right there where that hole is

I danced into the earth 

and found myself rebirthed

Your ears heard

while mine listened

and my soul glistened 

hummed like twilight before night time

moonlight before sunshine

listen

it’s a whisper

crisper than the crack of dawn

louder than a mid-cut lawn

more beautiful than black and white

more powerful than kryptonite

but don’t worry

it’s nothing if your hear it

but if you listen…

-MCL-

(so this is an actual letter that I sent to a ‘friend’ a while back. I was going through my insane Keats phase just after Bright Star was released) 

My Dearest Sir,

It has been what feels like eternity since we, like fools, did say goodbye to something that so clearly has shown it will not leave. It feels like I have died a death of the soul and there is nothing that exists that could bring me back to life like you. Never in my entire existence have I been so taken by emotion. I have been drunk and sober and hungover all in one moment. All in a moment of you. What reason have you, my love, what reason good enough to justify this brutal attack you have ordered upon my heart?

It has been but mere weeks yet I have suffered without you the magnitude of two lifetimes. My heart aches and my body weakens at the thought of you. The thought that my thoughts of yesterday shall not manifest themselves into actions of tomorrow. Still, I think of you in that very light in which I first met you. That light that, at the time, was sufficiently bright to temporarily blind me to the future pain you inevitably would afflict upon my very being. I saw no such pain and if I did, which I might have, I pushed it aside. I soaked myself in your beauty. I paid no mind to the consequence and what a great consequence it turned out to be. There would be no difference, though, had I paid any mind, for my heart is the master and my mind merely a pawn waiting to be moved.

My deepest apologies I send to you for I did not know it would turn out so. I did not know I was capable of expressing a love as strong as this. I did not know I was capable of feeing it. It amazes me still how one can feel this strongly about another and not have them express that they, too, possess a feeling equally strong. Is it not the strength of the magnet that pulls the metal towards it? Am I mistaken? Is the magnet merely pulling itself towards an unwanting metal? My heart has reason to believe you have found another. It suffocates me to write this yet I write still, with the hope that if I hold my breath for long enough, it would ultimately lead to my death and end of this painful misery. Have you found another? I sincerely hope she will treat you half as well as I intended. As it is true, we do not deserve a love as pure as did exist between the gods but you deserve to be loved enough. Enough to show you that love is enough. Enough to withstand the greatest of tribulation. My fear exists in eight legged creatures and loneliness and darkness but never have I feared a thing so weak as distance. I forget, though, that not all are like me and that maybe, just maybe, there are people to whom distance is a powerful thing. A thing so magnificent that it would be reason enough to discard the truest and most beautiful of all feelings. That which is love.

Still, I do not know what love is. Every time I find myself to be close to it, I find it to be a mirage. A dream. What if you were just a dream? I should have you know, that for a while, a dream is what you felt like for each time I connected with you I would fly as if flying were possible. I would soar above reality. I would gaze down on humanity. and laugh at their attempts for I would see myself in them. Only now it feels as if I have failed just like them.

I have nothing more to say to you, only that I miss you. I miss you so much. I am still unsure as to whether it is you I miss or the idea of you in my writing. I still write about you. My listeners have grown sick of you for you are all I write. You are all I breath. I am still waiting for life to show me another path. They say it takes time. Hopefully I can breath again. Somewhere in the future. Hopefully you can too.

Yours Always
MCL 

Sunday 10 minute Poem/Free writing Challenge 1

What good is a day without night time? 
surely no better than sunshine 
hidden by clouds
that threaten to rain
but never do more than drive me insane
with dark when it should be bright time
What good is a cup without tea?
What good is a room without me? 
What good is a night
what good is a day
and what good is a cup when you’re that far away?
What good is this life without something 
for even a nothing is something when nothing is something you see every day

-Charlie-

Sunday 10 minute Poem/Free writing Challenge 1

• Time yourself with this online timer

http://timer.onlineclock.net

• Use the following prompt

Write a poem or a free verse using the following start: “What good is a day…”

• Upload your piece unedited when the timer goes off