I’m a poet. Sometimes I sit by the water and listen to it for hours, but that is not why I am a poet. Sometimes I think about how grass feels on the bottoms of bare feet, or about how the leaves in the trees are so green that they make my eyes feel heavy and drunk. Poetry, for me, though, is narcissistic and these things do not make me a poet, they just make a me a human.

So I can read passage after passage, line after line, word after word about people, places, things, feelings; authors will use descriptive words without giving any description. Though, when my quill hits the parchment, with a flourish I might add, it expresses only my innermost thoughts and desires. Every poem I write is me, and every one of them writes me as well. So it goes.

There are times when writing flows quickly, day in and out, like feelings. There are times when I sit at the bottom of the ocean like a rock and let the tides salt wash me with their coming and going, and my feelings sit under layers of silt, sand, and salt. Passion though, it’s a fire that never burns out; it will burn low, it will burn hot, but without it you are but wick and wax.

You said you were curious and so I have delivered to you my ramblings in their most sugary sweet form. You can repeat words endlessly, seeking simple semantic satiation, but feelings ought not be described. They ought to be felt.

Standing upon broken shells and rocks, I could hear only the soft pounding of the waves and the crunch underfoot. The Sound, a deep dark bed that lay between me and distant twinkling lights, purred demurely. Off, not too far, a buoy flashed frantically its green light to welcome ships home. I had come for the same reason though I still had a ways to go.

I walked slowly from the crushed beach to the wooden pier. Over the water and out it took me; I recall the blinding lights above that chased the stars ever further. The breathless voice of the Sound was all I could hear over the soft thud of my boots and the simple patter of rain. In retrospect, I was hoping to chase away my demons. In retrospect, it worked. As I sit now in relative comfort miles from that pier, figuratively and literally, I ponder intently the grief of grieving there.

To give up, like I had, a piece of myself to be filled with such greater feelings of resolute apathy or spiteful ambivalence, was neither a trick of the head nor of the heart. I felt it forced upon me, in a way, that brought me to have little care for earthly concerns. Disconnected from my peers, my family, my friends, at the time mind you, I found myself for the first time embraced by someone new: myself. Reticent am I on the topic of self-loathing, for I find it a slope most-slippery and least-rewarding, but hither-to I had not seen fit to account for myself.

Life is and always will be, but I will not. Lasting only as long as my breaths, when the worms find me, I will be without care. The treats and barbs alike left in my wake will live only until the few that loved me have coughed their dying breaths. To this end, in this end, I find great solace. A dark calm that washed over me that night and bore me far away from discontent. Though I digress, it was an unlikely transformation borne of human sacrifice. You will kill one poet to raise another; I think he would be satisfied with the cost.

Much of my time was spent there weeping silently into the cold, salty wood of an otherwise nondescript pier in an otherwise nondescript port. The rain would bathe me, soak me, and leave me miserable and cold, yet cleansed. Cold wind would sting my faces and eyes and drive the rain into me until I had suffered just as much as I should.

With responsibilities shirked, obligations unfilled, relationships destroyed, love and hate alike quelled, and purpose vivified, I stumbled back to a warm bed. Sleep came next that lasted many years.

I am awake.

Sometimes emotions have run too wild. Sometimes you’ve gone from a low place to a high place; you’ve taken an euphoric trip so quickly that your head spins.

Standing now in the dark with only a bit of cord to tether me to my love, Penelope, I look around and place myself outside the beauty of the night. A stranger looking in, perhaps, or an omniscient yet powerless observer. It’s this sort of experience where one leaves themselves behind and contemplates life from an outer consciousness. Maybe that doesn’t make any sense at all to you.

When I look back at the things I have felt, said, or written, I look down, back, or even up at someone who I am not. Between these great moments of clarity is the light. This light feels so bright when I can see so much more that it feels blinding. However, without this light I could not appreciate the darkness. My life progresses in a dreamlike fashion where I act on whims until something tears me so fully from myself that I have to look back and merely observe for a moment.

Recently, there’s a new sort of light that has come into my life. The same sort of murky, clouded light, but promising a more complete view, or at least a more complimentary one. It’s amusing to think that I might chase something that will bring me so much emotion yet again. A dear friend of mine played a song upon his guitar tonight and it riled my muse; not for poetry, but she stole me away to force me to look again at everything.

“Here we are at the beginning”, I say. “This is where it all starts. From here we are blind.”

My muse laughs and I resent her.

Rising to my feet, I cowered as the freezing breeze stung my shins with sand and combed me with dust. I looked upon my ship, torn and broken on the rocks, and cursed she who had wrought my viduity. She, who had widowed me, stirred callously as I kneeled and wept, wetting the broken frame and returning salt to salt. Despite her brutal hand, I stood again and turned my back to her.

She had borne to me to this place of my rebirth; I turned my back to her and left the frozen beach.

She sunk in the sand a bit beneath my feet, causing me to jump. She was sturdy, oh, and she would carry me far enough. Returning my eyes to the horizon, I drank in the sun’s splendor as she poured herself over the tree-tops, spilling into the water below before turning golden. Despite the brilliant sun, the aged guardian trees around me felt cool and uninviting; they caused me to pause for moment. I had to wonder if I could sleep under them tonight, or would they prey upon me when the sun fell.