Cri de cœur I can’t write. I can’t find the words. I have things to say, Perhaps too many things, But when I try to work I sit in my study, With thousands of Successfully authored, Beautifully completed books Sitting jauntily on the shelves, Quietly but surely sneering Their considerable contempt, And I stare at the screen, Stare at the words, Words hanging in the air, Characters, friends, enemies Waiting to be acknowledged, Losing their patience, Fierce in their will to live Their wild lives and squalid deaths, Their wondrous joys, love and laughter, Sorrows, pain and loss of hope; All jostle for position, All demand – shout! - to be continued, And I, the so-called mastermind, I sit and do nothing. A fat and full manuscript sits On a revolving bookcase, Close by my side, Above reference books, Dictionaries, thesauri, Tools of the trade, And it lays heavy on my heart Because I want to retype it, Edit and enjoy its story once more, Spend time with my friends in there, Watch, share their dances through life, But on the screen is another; This needs to be completed, Around forty thousand words is all – I can normally achieve at least Two thousand a day – And there are friends there too, But they have such complex needs, Wearying me at the moment, After many, many adventures, Sharing triumphs and disasters, Through somewhere in the region of Three hundred thousand words And a multitude of worlds. But I have to write. Every day which passes Without words falling onto the page, Without the excitement of Different worlds, different folk, Different times, different thinking; Days without magic, And ignoring Einstein, Because he was wrong, And dancing through space time, Sliding along the event horizons Of vast, slathering black holes, Hearing the song of the stars, And reaching out to touch The exquisite face of God/ess; Every day without this Is not a day I have grasped. I haven’t lived up to that Which I see on my wall Immediately I wake; Carpe diem! It is seconds, minutes and hours Which like the finest of sands Have trickled through my fingers, To disappear, diluted to nothing, Their mediocrity lost in the vast, night-chill Of the indifferent desert sands of time, And I am a day nearer to death, And though that adventure Excites me gloriously, I have words to say, Work to finish, Large projects and small Clamouring for attention, Some like meteors flying by, Bright, fast, ephemeral, Poems, sagas, taxing tales, And some the mighty gas giants, Vast, inscrutable, incredibly complex, Novels, a trilogy, lengthy tomes. So here I sit at my writing-station In the large sitting room, As far from my study as I can get And remain in beloved Kerlanguet. Squeaker will not sit with me here But has a nest on my desk Where she curls up and dreams Of the starship she captains, And the mighty battle being fought Along the edge of the Sirius System While I, her most humble servant, Sit and batter the keyboard, Often my words pouring out Far too fast for my clumsy fingers, Crashing totally the spell checker, All to be later corrected and reviewed. I sit here now, alone, hiding from Myself, my mind, my self-discipline, My imagination, my yearning, My friends and foes, All of whom wander still Around my searching consciousness, Each with their own inimitable style, Overstated, understated, sly and canny, Good, evil, hypocrites and bullies, Martyrs and vagrants, prophets and fools, And I try to ignore them all, But it is like sitting in a room With a thousand old telephones, All of which are ringing and I know That each phone has the right to be answered, Each phone is a call from one of my creations, And I have a responsibility to each, These my fictitious made real children, And I sit like a rabbit, Caught in the headlights Of an oncoming juggernaut And pick up none of the jangling receivers, Just feel their cacophony scratch my soul. I can’t write - but I must!