Fresh Ambition

        Occasionally I forget who I am. I get lost in the fog of the every day, and I know that something is missing, but I don't have the energy to change it.
        This is my life. But it shouldn't be.

        Last week I went to a poetry reading at a cafe. A lot of it was open mic or slam, with one featured poet. There were a lot of different styles, but they all shared the characteristic of being poems that were either intended for the stage, or paper poems made performable. This was a huge paradigm shift.

        I'm used to poetry being written for the page and the mind. Speaking, if anything, only seems to break it. As if the words formed in the mind are more beautiful than those heard. And so I never understood the purpose of reading poetry. And maybe that's the key.

         Reading poetry adds little. Performing poetry is just that, a performance art. I was never aware of the performance piece before. No one ever showed me. I'd never seen a case where poetry, by being read, was brought any more to life than it was on the page.

        But now I am, and I want to scream. I want to make my words flow somehow, despite my stutter, and I think that with practice it is certainly possible; I managed to act a memorized piece with reasonable fluency, so why not something with greater rhythm for my voice to ride along with? I want my verse to sing, to shout. I am tired of it living only in my notebooks and in the word dobs currently multiplying on my laptop.

        This is me, fighting. This is me remembering who I am and what I must do. To create, to express. Perhaps this is sheer vanity. But perhaps not... I am driven far too much towards the arts to never know.