And the ink runs out

18.1.2020

And the ink runs out

Leaving me stranded

With words still pouring out

Of my eyes, ears and mouth.

I am frozen, as if caught unaware

The openings are jammed with imaginary stoppers.

My words are pushed back inside my head, as if crammed in a miniscule room.

My words are growing claustrophobic, confused at the sudden end to the free flow.

They are falling over each other inside my head.

Getting tangled, fighting among themselves,

And finding no escape, disintegrating.

Inspiration, followed by a sudden, familiar urge to write,

Momentary joy, cut short by a gentle fading of ink on paper;

I am growing desperate,

The words cry out to be freed and not curbed.

And the ink has run out

Leaving me caught

At this crucial moment, when after hours of testing and trying,

And feeling my way around the swirls of emerging literary creation,

I could finally taste it.

Could decorate its frame with words I had selected,

Feelings I had created,

Combinations I had concocted.

Then the rich flowing blue faded to a pale imitation.

The words cry out one final time:

A plea to be freed,

To see light,

To exist independent of me.

But I, not the creator, only the middleman, am forced to ignore,

While I attempt to breathe colour back into the pen.

In those fleeting moments, the door shuts,

The storm passes, the word walls crumble.

It is gone, my dreamlike creation,

Into an abyss more elusive than memory,

And I am left grasping

At fast fading thoughts, lean ends of words and pale phrases.

I shake my pen one final time in the rhythm of the drumming in my aching head,

An unnamed sadness takes over.

I scribble absentmindedly on my paper,

And look down at the large swirls of rich blue.

Ink.