Turn Heartache to Poetry

Ending a romantic relationship may be necessary, but it can also be unbelievably painful. In the aftermath, you spend your days with your head on a pillow and covers up to your chin. You stay up all night and then listen to the birds sing early morning hymns. You veg out on the couch watching reruns of outdated sitcoms or dramas. You avoid phone calls and texts, and if you do eat something, it's normally something cheesy like Cheetos or you drink something hot like black tea. Your mentality is to give in to self pity and give up on everything else. Well, here's one way you can combat your feelings of pain, hurt, anger, and poor self worth. Put pen to paper or finger to key pad and turn your heartache into poetry.
 
Check out my three-part break up poem and tell me what you think.

The Breakup

He filleted my heart with words
— deliberate, trimmed of sentiment
blunt and laced with sanctimony —

his voice, all piss and vinegar.
His touch, all acid and gravel,
my essence recoiled. He sighed noisily,
it wafted above the sizzle of hot grills
and chatter of salad plates. The smiling server,
fragrant with smoked and roasted meat,
brought his entree. He sliced rare porterhouse,

spooning its juices over caramelized onions and
beckoned for the wine list. He sniffed Bordeaux.
I sipped Perrier laced with lemon

feeling my heart beat crescendo.
Forever meant only two years.

After the Breakup —Week 1

I am a pale yellow room —

vacant, scented with methane, with sulfur.

I am a desert, a wilderness
of bare mountain peaks and valleys
with dried creeks littered
with carcass and carrion

and breathless vapor.

I am the earth parched and layered with the

glow of smoldering lava.

I am a branch chopped and sawed
and cut and cracked, decayed and stained
with bloody excrement.
I am language without verbs and nouns.

I am held in a snapshot, on a canvas,
in a memory, in a breath, in a sigh.

I am a gift unwrapped, untouched, unknown, unseen.
But, I am.

After the Breakup —Week 4

My memories have starched edges

that fold stiffly. I wrap them
in hollow groans that echo from arid places,

in heartache that beat a dirge of betrayal,

in flesh-cutting rage that spills red on white linen.

They’re packed away in apathy.

One day I will shake them free,

hang them in green meadows
where warm breezes filter blossoms through red linen

releasing fragrant petals.

Pour l’instant:
Fall on me Catoctin.
Bake me in your burnished oven Mount Makushin, and
baste me with scented ash.
Tap me on the shoulder great morning light,
shake ice petals from my eyes,
let me sniff black dandelions.

Where are the Bahamian Creative Writers?

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“I have never studied poetry or fiction by a Bahamian author in junior high or high school,” said a certain high school student in Nassau, The Bahamas. “We studied other Caribbean authors, but not Bahamians,” she continued. Her statement is an indictment of the Bahamian literary culture, but, unfortunately, did not totally surprise me. I’d had a similar experience decades earlier. For my part, I knew of several Bahamian poets and could quote their poems. But I did not study them in the educational system, I learned about them from my parents. However, I am saddened about the dearth of Bahamian poetry and fiction in classrooms across The Bahamas. I intend to be the change I want to see.

For 10 years I’ve been a noncreative in corporate America. I have studied, worked, and lived in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area.  I have focused mostly on writing content for newsletters, brochures, proposals, magazines, reports, white papers, press releases, and marketing products. Additionally, I have engaged in substantive and copy editing of a variety of publications and communications products. I have amassed more than 13 years of experience in publications development and production. However, since I had the conversation with that special young lady last summer 2012, my creative juices have been reawakened, and my creative energy refocused.

I am now a recovering noncreative, and I want to begin to build the Bahamian literary experience through my poetry and my fiction. I want Bahamian children to be able to embrace the words of someone like them, who has walked their streets, lived in their neighborhoods, studied in their school system, speaks their language, and shares their culture. I want Bahamian college student to participate in literary criticism of local authors. I want the Bahamian work force to read local authors and their book clubs or in the privacy of their homes. I want to introduce this experience coupled with my own personal experience as a Bahamian American to the world stage. I have a unique voice bathed in a variation of the Gullah dialect and British and American English. And I have the experience of multiple cultures.

 

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” is one translation of a quote by Chinese philospher Laozi. Well, I’m several steps into my journey, dedicating time each day to reading poetry and literary fiction and then to writing.