Pre-Poem Feelings

What happens when you write a poem about having trouble writing?

Pre-Poem Feelings

Every time I write

I feel like I am going to suffocate

Because I don’t know if I can even recreate

The voice that has scribbled down the words I have said before

I’m just not sure

If these words

Will be the work of art I am striving to give birth to

I write so many poems

Yet there are so few

I ever read a second time

Because I can’t seem to find my message

The statement I’m desperate to make

I just keep making the same mistakes

Drowning old experience in polluted lakes

I wish that I could take my mind and brush it off in flakes

And rake

All the shattered pieces

And knit them into fleeces

Of poetry

Everyone wants to do that, or is that just me?

Because if I could paste just the perfect lines here I would finally feel free

From the voices in my head

That say you could have wrote something more beautiful instead

Because I feel like your newest work is something that I’ve already read

I don’t want my poems to sound mundane

But my life is drenched in monotony, it’s driving me insane

And I don’t even have anyone to blame

Except the girl who wears my name

And writes words I know I can write cleaner

Obscener

With more luminosity and velocity

More power and pride

More of these revolutions inside

The chambers of my heart

If only you could help me kick-start

Because write now all I do is ramble

And scramble

Some letters like this

And wish that

Someone will think they are worth hearing

Or sharing

Not tearing or comparing

Them to a poem I have read before

Because by the end of a stanza I feel naked on a cold marble floor

Praying no one will open the door

And let the cold air penetrate me

But I keep writing and fighting

Tightening and biting

Into new sheets

So if you don’t mind

Just take a new seat

And listen to these words in a different way

And maybe I pray

It will be worth listening to me another day.