Prose & Poetry

Or song lyrics. Or music composed to express inner thoughts, feelings and mood.

Prose. To write sentences filled with common meaning and words, logic embraced to trace the path of ideas from inception to conclusions. Thoughts fully formed and applied to real situations. Explaining what is happening, or how something physical came to be like a mountain or canyon or river or sea.

When we know something in our mind we write prose. We explain and elucidate. We share so others can know what we know and gain from it.

Poetry. We write this with words but with different relationships and meanings to the other words. We are expressing something we cannot do with logic or pathways of formation. These are concepts, ideas, feelings, moods, emotions.

When I do not know something for certain – I am at sea – I still need to express myself. That’s when poetry comes on the scene. To express the inexpressible. That’s the job of poetry.

For those with musical talents as well the poetry can leap to the music and become a song, an aria, a hymn, a cantata, and opera. The story of inner self must be told. Few tools are available to do this when understanding is totally absent but if words are there, then a stab at meaning is machined by the mind. The result is often a poem of some sort and then related arts come to bear with the result.

Presently I’m struggling with writing kind and gentle thoughts. My mind is not in that mood. I am feeling angst in the full meaning of that German word. Roiling, twisting feelings pulling at the mind stem. Pain coursing down the spine to nerve clusters throughout the body. Tension. Aches and pains. Tightness of chest. Sleeplessness. These are the symptoms of the angst (awwng-st). The signals are accumulating and I know what they mean. And what I must do.

Express myself. Unload the data banks of feelings. Let loose the emotions. Do so constructively. Remain a civilized person and citizen of the community – of the global community itself. Even when others around me are not so arranged in their mind and soul!

Turmoil reigns in many corners of the earthbound civilization. It is not all cocktails and parties, or dances and banquets. No; rather it is work, cleanup, sleep and commuting. It is toil and labor in clean rooms and dirty work spaces. It is pressure laden and stressful. It is life in its routine. Not always very nice; often ugly. But nearly always fruitful to one end or another.

How then do we find footing in these tumultuous environs?

That is a good question and one we will explore in coming weeks. We will use tools from the past, like Meg’s story and check up on how she is doing in these days. We will hunt for the enigmas and seek their meaning. We will solve some puzzles, no doubt, along the way, but those will be temporary discoveries which will have to wait for fuller understanding.

Meanwhile, we are left with feeling and emotion. These need expression. To relieve built-up pressure.

I began writing a poem in this space but ran into a wall of silence after only a few stanzas. Days later I have given up and realize now that prose serves me just as well. I guess I can still articulate what I feel and mean or question the unknown fairly well.

When I cannot do that, I will resort to the emergence of poetry to express my feelings. Until then…..

November 23, 2016