Inspiration

A few years ago I watched a PBS interview with Sufjan Stevens when he was on his Majesty Snowbird Tour. I probably watched it ten times and would provide the link to said interview now but I am either unable to find it or it was removed from the PBS website. (I'm hoping Katie will read this and provide a link to it in a comment because she was the one who shared it with me) The point is, during part of the interview Sufjan tries to describe his creative process when writing new songs. He says that it isn't something he finds inside himself but something that is revealed to him from an outside source. And he merely gets a small glimpse of it and creates what he sees and hears. 

Recently I've been inspired by beauty in seemingly insignificant experiences. (I'm not trying to compare myself to Sufjan, not at all) But it's like a word dam broke inside me and all I can do is gush liquid language. It's a strange but beautiful waterfall. I'm constantly writing poems inside my head all day long and can't wait to put it down on paper. I haven't felt that way since I was a freshman in high school full of unrequited love and hormones. All of that to say, here is my newest attempt at being poetic:

The Other Sea

 

Where do I begin to unravel the navy

seam in the denim night sky?

That vastly empty openness snatching gazes of “What if?”

(What if aliens disguised as humans try to take over the world?

What if I were a successful failure like Apollo 13?

What if all this really was created, on purpose?)

But tonight, tonight where smug city lights outshine faraway fireballs

instead of resenting the gnarled noise of New York polluting night air

I make a wish on man made machine stars.

Blinking white

Blinking green

Blinking red

I stare, stare, stare at firefly lights ablaze

This city sky is a concert of skyscraper antennas

lightbulbed windows and

airplanes connecting distant dots—

the anthropomorphic wish ship of the other sea—

a shooting star full of weary businessmen, dumb tourists, and Skymag

Isn’t wishing upon a real star as satisfying as the possibility

that I know a man on that plane?

There is a one in eight million chance that my childhood friend,

my professor, my future lover is dashing and splashing the dark

with blinking white and constant red light.

I blink and think my God, I wonder what we look like from up there?

A distant horizon shouts holiness and humanity:

the lover with the fate

the celestial with the organic

the eternal with the temporal

the beauty with the tragedy

the created with the creation