Anaphora

Posted on March 21, 2004 in Poems

I am writing at my desk.

I am writing at my desk to fill the box that says “Entry Body” because I abhor the naked space.

I am writing at my desk, pounding the keys of the keyboard till the acid-weakened faces erode under my fingertips.

I am writing despite the futility of knowing that when I fill this box it will scroll up and there will be another empty line.

I am writing despite my fear that no one will read what I read.

I am writing as a manic defense — hypergraphia — against despair.

I am writing because it is the evening and I cannot go for a walk beneath the blue-green live oaks in the shovel-bottomed arroyos.

I am writing because it is nearly nine pm and, aside from a distant book store, there is no place I want to go.

I am writing to hear the creak of my chair beneath me, to know that I am alive.

I am writing to defy the sunburn on my arms and the heartburn in my chest.

I am writing so that I can sleep deeply and inspire my clicking eyes to see the clutter stores of my brain in a new way.

I am writing to subdivide all that I know, to excavate the minerals in each plot, and to build new visions from them in the delineations that I have created.

I am writing to keep producing, because without producing junk there will be no drive to break free from it and unloose the cinnamon giraffes from my frustration of orbs.

I am writing to be perplexing to others so that I feel like I am an individual.

I am writing to learn how to hear the moon.

I am writing where an astronomer on Arcturus will be able to see me in several hundred years through his telescope and read over my shoulder.

I am writing to prevent myself from being a click as the pot is stirred.

I am writing to be ignored and to be heard.

I am writing because the nails of Christ have been hammered in the back of my brain and they don’t want to come out for fear of the people who disagreed with my assessment of them.

I am writing to free the Buddha from too much mind-boundedness.

I am writing to expose the myths of flabbergasting, penultimate mule-minds.

I am writing so that my mother won’t see what I write.

I am writing so that the underside of shame will turn ochre.

I am writing and it’s none of your business why I write.

I am writing as two locomotives crash headon into one another on a track in Kansas.

I am writing so you can see my entrails and prophesy by them.

I am writing to slough off my skin so you can wear it to the festival.

I am writing to forget and to be forgotten, to remember and be remembered.

I am writing in contradictions and in consistencies.

I am writing to be foolish.

I am writing not to be wise like a priest, a scientist, or an intellectual.

I am writing repetitively.

I am writing.

I am writing no more.

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For a classic in this form, investigate this excerpt by Christopher Smart