Excerpts from Catharsis
Shauna McGaha
Why do we write, we bleeders of ink, we scribes of secrets?
Catharsis.
Cop - out.
Escape.
Release.
I write to dance on paper.
Swing my hips round with paradox,
tap-dance across the keys into fanciful rounds of puns,
and spin out into metaphor.
This is how I move:
sometimes slow, painful and forceful;
stone by stone I dig my way through the wall
until I tumble free;
others smooth and gliding, fast, sharp and direct
crashing through.
I write to remember dragons
streaking across the full mooned sky.
Fairies curl my hair and I cannot forget them,
to be a child catching butterflies,
I want to remember.
In my way I am immortal
so long as the edges only yellow and curl
but never burn.
I write to remind myself that all embers
eventually die out
and I must learn from the Phoenix
the only one who has risen.
I write to remember young conversations over cappuccinos,
smoking smelly French cigarettes,
pretending to be Sartre.
I write because I do not drink.
This is my low.
I write because I do not trip.
This is my high.
I write so that I can sleep,
I write because I no longer dream
unless
the fantasies drip from my fingertips into ink.
Chase the characters around just fast enough
to keep up and hear them speak.
I write to say things I cannot say aloud for fear
of crucifixion, of judgments, and of looks.
The look of a raised brow.
Write to raise that brow.
I write my way up the mountain
until I can climb no more
and i look out over the horizon to find my way home.
A beautiful creature
and if I keep writing I will find my way out
of my self-made maaes and come home.
I write because when I look into the abyss of a blank page
I realise what God must have felt like on the first day
and want to know what he felt on the seventh.
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