So You Want To Be A Writer

So you want to be a writer?

Is that it? My mind whispered

You want to be a bitter, half-starved fighter

Think you can’t be eviscerated

By the taste of reality

When the bills come calling in

Who will feed the empty-mouthed banshee?

Who will come to the rescue, a jinn?

So there are no place for dreams

Is that it? My pockets maybe groovy

But what of my soul? It screams

Silently crying, is there no way to be happy?

What of a compromise? A path traveled 

Where both are satisfied - stomach and soul

Where there is no need to grovel, all potential unraveled

And the pieces fall into place and I am extolled 

Is that not just a pipe dream? My mind denounce

I want the pipe dream, pine for it, dream in it

Then write! In the death of night when nothing pounce

And live for the hope, the dream of it all

Inspiration

I wrote this as a response to “So You Wanna Be A Writer”  by Charles Bukowski (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gn5dYPMSjaY). And my own struggles and thoughts around writing. 

Process

When I heard Charles Bukowski’s “don’t do it,” I asked myself, “So you want to be a writer?” Because from my deepest of depths, there is something that calls for me. Calls for me to write. It’s a release, a compulsion that I cannot disobey. Basically, what he describes in his poem, it’s happening to me. I cannot stop.