I thought about giving up writing once,
I even put all my books and notebooks together
and packed them away in a cardboard box;
I thought about giving up what I loved
and what had always given me profound happiness,
and I even thought I could change who I was
and forget about everyone I had met,
and everything I had written –
but that thought honestly only lasted for a day,
and in no time at all, I was seeing things,
being inspired by things, hearing things,
and wanting desperately to write in my notebook
a poem about them;
I didn’t lose my love for writing,
but I did have my writer’s identity taken away from me
and stripped from me, you could say;
and it broke my heart putting all my cherished poems
and memories away, and putting them under my bed,
and I thought that the only time
that they would see the light of day
would be when I was reminiscing to a friend
that I used to be a poet, at some time in the future
when I was old and grey.
However, do you know what happened?
Do you know what I did?
I did something, that at the time was not planned:
I started again, I allowed myself to feel shame and pain,
and then I took my notebooks
from the box I had packed them away in,
I went to the next blank page of my latest notebook,
and I started to write a new poem
with my favourite silver pen –
I wrote one of my favourite poems, “The Phoenix”,
and I kept writing and writing and writing,
and only occasionally stopping to look back
before carrying on in the direction I had been walking,
I took pride in my gift again,
and I felt like myself again,
because I was writing again.
The moral of my story, if any,
is that if you love something so much
do not run away from it,
do not put it in a box and say “Fine, forget it!”,
because by doing so you are hurting yourself,
you are committing a mistake,
you are doing something that is hard to come back from
before it is too late;
take it from me:
nobody is perfect,
everybody makes mistakes,
the people who try to bring you to your knees
can only do so if you allow your entire world
to descend into a flux;
so, if you ever doubt yourself,
if you ever question what you are doing,
if you ever think that you would be better off
without the one thing that you most adore and love,
put that thought out of your mind
the second that your fear delivers it to you.
If you are an artist, keep making art;
if you are a singer or a musician,
keep making you music;
and if you are a writer, keep writing
and don’t ever believe that all of what makes you so special
could ever easily just be put away,
and forgotten about for a rainy day,
in any kind of memory box.
notebook
My Poem ‘The Lost Notebook’
Something just doesn’t feel right;
something about me feels missing;
I have an idea for a poem that I want to write,
but something strange and unlike me has happened:
I don’t have my poetry notebook,
I do not have my pen –
I can feel the creation and formation of a piece of art
beginning to play, inspired by the world around me,
to which I am listening,
but I have no way to make my thoughts real
so that that can be written and read on a page.
I feel like I am in a daze, and I cannot concentrate, or settle down;
I feel like I am without my heart and soul –
a blank page and a lost poet,
wishing more than anything
that he had a blank page in front of him to write upon,
as is always, usually, the way.
I feel like a conductor without an orchestra;
I feel like a driver trying to drive a car
without a steering-wheel;
I feel like a soldier trying to climb an insurmountable wall;
I feel like the landlord of an empty bar;
I feel like the world is a dream and cannot be real;
I feel like I can hear a phone ringing loudly,
but I cannot reach for it to answer its call.
My notebook is special to me.
My notebook is my silent microphone, my inner-megaphone –
the closest thing that I have to a diary;
my notebook is one of many, but it is unique;
my notebook, and my notebooks, have been with me,
and I have lived and experienced things in life,
and I have written on every page of every one
of them every day of every week.
Fear strikes me deep:
‘where is my notebook?’,
‘what has happened to it?’, I ask;
‘did I leave it somewhere?,
‘did someone take it?’ –
I’m sure I brought it with me in my bag?
However, then it hits me,
then I realize and I remember what I did,
what has happened, and where my notebook is:
my notebook is sitting on my bed, in my bedroom,
with my pen on top of it,
waiting for me to open it up to the next blank page
and write some new poetry.
I feel stupid;
I feel foolish;
I feel like an idiot;
I feel like a gasping fish.
I feel like I am in a boat, on a river,
without a paddle, because I left it on the shore behind me;
I feel like I am showing how different I am to everyone
for the first time, and everybody knows that I am not myself,
and as if everyone is all at-once looking at me.
When I finally returned home,
and I opened the door of my bedroom,
I immediately caught a glimpse of my notebook,
and I saw that a ray of light from the sun
was shining through my bedroom window
directly on to the cover;
as soon as I saw it, the frown that I had been wearing
immediately turned into a smile,
and I picked up my notebook with both hands
and I held it as if I were holding in my hands
the face of a lover.
It might sound irrational;
it might sound strange to miss, and to fear losing,
something that to a lot of other people
is just a replaceable book –
but, to me, losing something that is connected to me,
and which I feel like is a part of me, I take incredibly personal.
To me, my poetry is like my child –
and that is why I never want to lose any notebook;
but this is the story of how and when,
I, one day, for a short time, had to live the life of a poet,
with a lost notebook, and no pen.
Mark The Poet 