I have about five different writing projects I should be working on. It’s a bit like battling a hydra–I’m busy chopping off heads and they’re growing back twice as fast and twice as many. It makes me a touch surly as I sit here and stare out the window at the sun and the patches of bare ground here and there.
Today’s my day to work, though, so I will work. But while I work, I’m thinking about an Allen Ginsberg poem, Sunflower Sutra. More specifically, these lines:
“Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?
You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!”
Why? Because I am. Because sometimes something sticks in your head and you must think about it until you’ve reached whatever conclusion your mind is hellbent on finding. For those interested, the complete text can be found here.
April 6, 2014 at 8:56 pm
How the hell did he get from ‘sunflower’ to a mad US train engine? … do I have the energy to read the rest of the text? … maybe tomorrow!
… hope you were suitably inspired though. 😀
April 6, 2014 at 9:42 pm
Ha! Sunflower in a rundown freight yard. 🙂 Inspired…perhaps. Managed to write the beginning of an epic story involving a very long hair for the two little boys I study science fiction and fantasy with.
April 7, 2014 at 1:00 pm
Seems it’s easy to lose touch with who I am–better to wear a protective mask. The ultimate goal of my memoir writing is to shed the disguises and bask in the radiance of the true me, the Sunflower. Isn’t that what we all want? I don’t relate much to Ginsberg, but this hits home with harmony. Thank you, Jennifer, for bringing it to my attention.
April 7, 2014 at 5:33 pm
You’re welcome, Ken. I’m glad it resonated for you.