Writing Prose Poetry Again

I've taken to writing prose poems again. It has been a while. The last few years haven't felt poetic, though I know everything can be and ought to be poetic. Comedy and tragedy, love and death, happiness and depression. It's all fodder for writing and anything fits inside a poem if done right, but that's the sticky part, doing it right. I often feel insufficient to the task. One day of not writing poetry becomes two becomes a month, a year, and I get thinking maybe I've forgotten how to do the thing at all.

This reminds me of a scene from a terrible Christmas movie The Perfect Christmas List. (It's so terrible I've watched it three years in a row. One can only watch a movie ironically so many times before having to admit liking it.) In that terrible movie, which I readily admit to liking, a woman on an ice-skating date, wobbles as though she has never been on skates. Moments later she is revealed to have been a figure skater in her youth good enough to merit a plaque at the rink. Terrible Christmas movies are renowned for inconsistencies, but this one bugged me. No one forgets their skills so thoroughly.

So it is with writing poetry. (I mean it's tough to forget how to do it, not that poetry should be anything at all like The Perfect Christmas List.) I know how to write prose poetry. I can't forget. That I haven't written much of it this year is beside the point. A year isn't time enough to develop much rust. Going back to it is as simple as lacing up the skates and glide across the page.

This afternoon before therapy, I drafted a prose poem about an imitation Arts and Crafts table in the waiting room. A week ago, I wrote two other prose poems that have proven a bit tougher to put out in the world. One is someone else's story they graciously gave me the okay to share. The other, about death, might upset the living, but maybe a little disturbance is good for the soul.

Still, after drafting, I held them back, revising for days and days. It was an odd pleasure to create something and hold onto it rather than send it into the world. Reminded me to write for myself first. Having an audience helps me become a better writer and gives another purpose to the writing, but the first purpose is just to write and that's often enough. Who needs to publish? Then again, you're reading this thing that I've published, so I may be full of crap.

I've taken to writing prose poems again. It feels good flaking off the rust, turning the gears of this machine, and cranking out the work I've built it to do.