pinch me now

For the first time in what I thought was two or three and a half years (which I now realize has actually been four and a half years!!) I can say that I'm actually writing a poem again.  The funny (and scary) thing is that it wasn't even writer's block.  One day there was just nothing.  As for being back....it wasn't a big moment of sudden creative energy or a dried-up dam suddenly overflowing with water from the gods up above. No, it was not a sudden rush of inspiration nor was it the muses filling up my well with creative juices and inducing a brilliant flow of words which I couldn't stop.  No.  It was nothing romanticized like that, but a simple moment--just like any other in the past four and a half years--where I attempt to write. This time there was something different, something very small and deceptively inconsequential ...  And I think it's here to stay.  The dormant period is over and maybe all the work of trying is paying off.  This "poem" is only a start to an awful, banal poem perhaps, but it's something and I'll toast to that and kiss this awful year off. 

I am very rusty.

To be frank, it was probably fear.  Fear of failing, of dying, of aging and withering away in this city that I cannot learn to leave despite all the bad hands it deals out to me.  I still have some fight in me, I guess.  I better, as I'm too young not to.  And perhaps this poem by Jenny Joseph had something to do with it.

Warning

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other peoples' gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that jeep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

By Jenny Joseph