The Wretch of Me

Oh inspiration! Where art thou hidden? I beseech you to flee hither and set free my woes - and my toes; so I may dance. I wish to smell the kindling flames. But where are you damn inspiration? Under the bed I see you not, nor in my pockets - though my pockets are burdened with despair and my mind clogged with suds and sops. I wish to bury my head in my hands; these soft, un-calloused hands of mine – but it’s no use. My lofty ideas have depleted me and I am spent and hungry. It’s all emptiness - as far as I can see. But you inspiration! Where the devil are you man? For I need you to sit at the tip of my pen, this pen, this lance of my anguish. Yes this lance! - This lance that assuages my boils - these rotten, horrid and puss filled boils that ail me much. It is the writers’ lot to live in despair! We, beings; though I doubt we are deserving of such a lofty title as ‘being’ for there is no ‘being’ within us; like shadows we wander life’s back-alley ways collecting the spent out shells of people’s lives.

The nights! Oh the nights I’ve spent staring. Staring at this bare sheet of paper! I say: Write! Write! Damn pen of mine write if you are a friend to me. But nothing! It won’t listen. It tells me: ‘How can I write my lord without the guiding hand of inspiration?’
‘The devil take you!’ I ferment…it’s all a mystery to me. Like fickle seasons: there are days when ideas come cheaply - flowing from fevered head to conduit; my pen, whose ink won’t flow fast enough. And there are days when all is dry like a thrifty tight-fisted Jew or the plains of Ethiop.

But why does one write? Because one feels? No rubbish! It is catharsis! Catharsis! It’s all a dismal business anyway. What is its design? Ha! There is no design. It is conceit; though dressed in fine garbs of eloquence and lofty phrases. It is deceit! - the flogging of one’s heart in public. There is pain and pleasure too in this flogging business if you’ll only believe me. Oh yes! We writers are merchants of self-pity. It is our lucre – our currency. We pity ourselves but deep down we glory in the grandeur of our humiliation. I should be executed and left to rot. Rotting is too good for me. Feed me to the Zoroastrian vultures; let my sinews drive their muscles, let my flesh power their wings, I wish to soar…

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