Burying my Metaphor

Once, long ago, I wrote the poem below.  I was proud of it.  It won an award or two.  But now, it bothers me, especially the line describing writing as "a pain, a birthing."  It's a common metaphor to describe books as people's babies.  But I wrote this when I had only words and books but no babies.  I know there are people who would disagree, but I would no longer use that metaphor.  Birthing is an entirely different experience.  With writing, you can make money.  Some people make a lot of money.  You can also get fame, but for most people, it's about self-fulfillment or telling a story.  You can bring meaning into the world and create something that wasn't there before.  And yes, writing can be a lot of work. On those levels, writing can sort of be compared to children.

But what is the product?  There is no comparison in my mind between a baby and a word or even an entire novel.  I just wrote a novel and submitted it for publication.  I know the difference.  If I had lost the one and only copy of that novel after working on it for almost a year and a half, I would have been sad and frustrated.  But I could then have started again.  And with modern technology, what is the chance of that?  Most of us have back ups and back ups to our back ups.  When one loses a baby, there is no replacing him or her.  You can't sit down and type out a new baby.  Even having a new child isn't always an option, and it isn't that easy when it is an option. This contrast becomes especially significant in light of the improbability that I will ever have a rainbow baby.

Like children, people say words have a life of their own.  Words can seem to have a life of their own but really don't.  They are simply a product of our thoughts and experiences.

Don't get me wrong.  I love writing.  Writing is a particularly meaningful way to ease the healing process and to share with others.  I would not give up writing for the world.  But I'd give up anything, my writing, my computer, my life, to hold another baby again.   I can promise you that is one metaphor I will not be using again.

"Writer’s Game"

Sweat beads form
And drip
Onto my fingers
As I sit at my computer
Staring at a field of
Cold, unfeeling white
Framed in gray
Prison bars.

Words play in and through my thoughts,
Like children
who don’t want to be "It,"
to be singled out,
untouchable, isolated.
I reach out to catch, to hold,
to place on the page
a single restless word,
but it dances before me,
laughing, inches from my
tortured mind.

I sit alone in silence
except for the jumble
Of wild images tumbling across each other,
Choking me with meaning
And drowning me in a chocolate pudding
Of memory clothed in imagination.
It is a pain, a birthing
To force the images into coherence.
I fight, I groan inside
While words mock fleetingly
From the edges of my mind
With their wispy laugh
Not so much child-like as
pixie-like
in their cruelty.

Once I catch the first
And try to force it to the page,
it will struggle
And cry out for freedom,
In a loneliness of its white cage.
Probably, once it is there,
I will set it free anyway,
In ignorance of where to go,
Which to catch next.
Over and over,
I swim through the pudding
Of my mind,
Wrestle a pixie-word to the page
And hit a wall, a barrier.
Who is in the net,
The cage,
the pixie, or me?

Inside, I scream with frustration
While the tinkle-laugh persists.

But then, I give up,
I let go,
Relax, and set myself free from the net
And a pixie-word
Tender and smiling
Will land
Feather-light
On my shoulder.
I will not force,
I will not fight the pudding.
In fact, once free of the net,
The pudding is gone.
And of its own free will
The word seeks the page,
Practically dragging me
To where I find the next,
And the next and the next,
their very best friends.

On their own,
The pixies form a dancing ring
Like magic.
They will sing,
They will laugh,
And I will join them.

The trick, the charm, the key to loose
The chains of pain
And senseless turmoil,I’ve found,
is not to catch that first word,
that mischievous word,
and force it to my will
but to let it catch
me.