KMS Blog

So from time to time I'll put poems I'm working on here.  I'm honstly not much of a poet, but it provides a good emotinal outlet for me, and is less involved than an entire story.  Feel free to comment or post suggestions....

 

"Seen"
It seems, love, I have disappointed you --
that you expected more of me, again,
to be strong, even if I must pretend 
there was nothing to what you put me through.
No need to explain, your friends all agreed,
my concerns were childish, a selfish path
when instead we should focus on your wrath,
and honor your experience, your need.
I wish you understood why i must leave
instead of turning, avoiding my eyes
whispering to friends I was full of lies
unable to see or hear why I grieve. 
(c) 2008 KMS

 

"Uncertainty on the Edge of Doubt"
What I once thought was hard fact
were only chalk line hypotheses
impermanent remedies
blown away by a breeze.

Once we were open to the other
but your past was concealed
and it’s cold where I used to feel -
perhaps it's time to travel on

I'll write stories from the edge
so look for yourself in pages
where no longer constrained by cages
we’ll achieve what might have been.
(c) 2008 KMS 

An interesting year, to say the least.  The hard work and sacrifice that go into creating art is an intense experience.  To those of us on the outside of this process, it can look romantic, even a wonderful expression of something that so many of us attempt at some point in our lives. We say, "Wow, that's great!  It must really be rewarding..."  And it is, for certain.  But the view from within can be far more complicated and harsh, and the psychological maneuvering necessary to stubbornly pursue your artistic dreams, at the expense of other more practical realities, can create a casualty list of its own.  It can certainly create its own demons.  The photos here, taken this past summer ('08) are of the nearly 300 rejection letters I masochistically  kept before I finally got published. 

But having gotten published, after over a decade of trying and many hundreds of rejection letters, has been an experience that is difficult to describe.  It has freed up a defiant part of me, a defiant part that was largely the part of myself from which motivation sprung.  Now I have a publisher, and anything I write can at least get into print, for the first time in my life.  And that prospect is, strangely, terrifying.  So the work I am doing now is letting go of this bare-knuckled and intensive “writer” who was willing to sacrifice so much to get published — letting that part of myself go, and finding a more mature way to express it.

If nothing else, it should make a good story :-)