Writer’s Sorrow: Published by the Live Poets Society of NJ

Writer’s Sorrow

Shayna Purdy

My pen hovers above paper–an empty, tempting, brilliantly white page.

Ink stains bone, I feel a frenzy in mine as the words come spilling out.

I lose my mind writing it down, my irrational brain on the page,

What a mess! But a sickeningly beautiful one, at least to 

An addict: a woman who cannot stop

Watching worlds form beneath my calloused fingertips,

Adhering to my rules, I am

A dictator.

Complete control over the creation

That resulted from losing control over myself.

But having control is an imagined reality, one that only applies to me,

The real world is different. I am not a dictator, but one who is dictated

By the universe and its cruelly confining laws. Physics?

How terribly woeful! For a dictator, gravity is only a notion.

While writing, I am weightless, floating– it’s why I get so carried away.

Until I learn to fly, I will let my words be my wings,

Carrying me to my sparkling kingdom, 

Where my ruling staff is a reliable pen,

My throne is a cold desk chair,

And my crown is my nonsensical mind.