Scifi, Monsters, and Survival:
Author Ariele Sieling’s Blog
Brain fog. We’ve all had it.
This is my poem about brain fog preventing me from writing.
There’s a dinosaur in my brain.
It eats my gray matter for lunch,
and then spits it back up,
mixing it back into what was there before.
So, if I can’t remember your name,
or where I parked my car
or what I ate yesterday,
it’s because there’s a dinosaur in my brain.
This poem is about The Zone, the state of being totally and utterly focused on your work. The whole world fades away and it’s just you and your writing (or art or music or whatever). They say the endorphin rush you get from a runner’s high is the same endorphin rush as being in the zone.
I love the zone. I don’t always get it. It requires the ability to concentrate for long enough to get in the zone, and there are plenty of things that can draw me out of that state—dogs, for example. Cats. Weather. Pain. The Spouse. Etc.
But, it’s great, regardless.
I wrote this poem when I wanted to get in the zone and couldn’t. It was a memory of what it was like being in the zone, with the hope that focusing on achieving that sensation would allow me to get to it again.
It’s like being whole
for the first time again.
The perfect balance of
calm and tension.
The ache and relief
The pain and the peace
Like my true self has awakened
for the first time again.
Bird on the wing
Wind rushing free
A broken dance
It’s like being whole
for the firs time again.
Unified, all of me.
Over the last few years, I’ve read a lot of craft books and attended a lot of workshops. And many craft books and workshops come with exercises!
This poem came from an exercise in which the instructor instructed (that’s an example of polyptoton!) us to imagine ourselves as an image. I’ll be honest, I don’t remember which book or workshop this poem came from. All I remember was that I was supposed to write 500 words of prose about myself (so probably from a book/class on memoir/personal essay and I’ve read/taken quite a few of those), but I thought that sounded boring so I wrote a poem instead so I could say I “did” the assignment, and then I went and worked on fiction for the rest of the time I’d allotted for the exercise.
Anyway, whenever I think about myself from an imagery perspective, I almost always come up with a field or a forest, a stream or a wandering path. So it’s not surprising that this is the poem that arose.
When I think of myself, I think of
wandering
meandering
wending and weaving
a relaxed stroll
drifting along
a wide open sky
field stretching out
waving grass
quivering aspen leaves
a winding river
babbling bubbling cheerful
and long
a lifetime
I accept this
