Over the weekend, I picked up the biography of Virginia Woolf written by Hermione Lee. This text, which is the size of a collegiate dictionary, is filled with every anecdote and known fact about the celebrated life and work of Virginia Woolf. I'm only a short way into the book but what is most interesting to me thus far is Lee's discussion of the creative forces behind Woolf's work. She takes great lengths to show how Woolf's life influenced her writing. Lee draws connections between people Woolf knew in life and how they may have, directly or indirectly, influenced characters in her stories. Through this reading, I began thinking about the creative forces in my own life and that which influences my own writing. Of course, it's much the same. People I know and experiences I've had. Somewhere between Woolf's life recounted by Lee and my own thoughts on the creative, I came up with the following poem.
creatrycks
The demon other dominates from within.
Its impish thoughts pitch and fork my dagger
pen, lacerating the page, to free the blood of Judas’
kiss, a succubian dream of dark night tales.
This feast, my bounty, expression of succulent distaste,
possesses my heart, mind, and hand in serpentine madness
weaving a woeful tune. I cry and laugh and pace the floor
lost in a Dantian circle as the sweat drips in cadence.
Wyrd words, like incantation, effuse a delicate gesture of up
and down from the scratches of my desperate hand. I watch
transfixed, behind my eyes, buoyed by the heat of creation
as immoral machination unfolds a story imitative of life.
~Michael Staples
