Momentum

He stared at the empty sheet in front of him. Everything had been said. Minstrel’s nightmare and it was only ten in the morning. Writer’s block. A poet arrested in void with nothing left to say. A pile of paper crumbled up in contempt of bland trivia. Thoughts so banal, repetitive, meaningless and fragmented, that they cut him in half. Ying in full flow of boredom and apathy. Yang remote from the theatre of mind. Disharmony and restlessness floated through emptiness. Dried oblivion in the pen, the nib scratched the surface in vain and blended in with pure nothingness. Ink well’s drought spilled urgency, but his brain would not connect to his soul. In the distance the grandfather clock chimed on every hour. A precision instrument crafted decades ago, held time and connection and yet disassociated Chronos from Kairos as minutes ticked away like an infinite reminder of impermanent eternity. The pendulum swayed back and forth, would not keep still as the writer’s bottom seemed to grow calluses, which would not distract from a burning desire to express himself, whatever the outcome. Punctuation preceded beginnings. Question marks begged questions. A semicolon with nothing to join nor distinguish. Barbed wire entangled the bard as cobwebs thickened the plot unable to string words together. He felt like a puppet on a time line of knots, a shackled marionette with yarn spools hanging upside down from the puppeteer’s rope. The death of his tale tore deep into his heart so full of suppressed passion and emotion, that it overpowered even feelings of inadequacy and failure. Maybe this is not the time to end reason though, he thought when kindness prevailed and his desperate gaze settled on a shuttered window, suddenly swinging open in the breeze of a cold winter’s day. He climbed through the opening and took off his clothes, sat on a bench and faced the bold oak tree which had shed acorns in abundance, waiting for the chill to subside. Watched a squirrel that had no worries, as it gathered his harvest for what was in store. He embraced nakedness, removed the straightjacket’s prison and lit a fire on the compost heap of time. Ashes to ashes and worms into phoenix. There was a whole world waiting outside and within the containment of freedom of nude essence and unnecessary restraint. He ventured inside a complex adventure, perplexed and bewildered and went wild in his notebook. Soon sweat dripped off his forehead and his hands begun to strain under untamed motion. With a flick of a wrist he smudged sentences with benevolent perspiration and looked at the time, which had appeared to have rested. Ten it was once more, though in the evening. The floodgates were open and slumber drifted away as Morpheus stayed quiet. He glimpsed at the outpour of writing and was chuffed with the seeds of awakening, gazed at the moon and savoured the moment. 18th June 2018