The Words in My Head Go 'Round and 'Round

When I was a kid, I would wake up in the morning while talking in my sleep. Or, at least, I would be talking in my sleep and then wake up, still talking. Once, another time when I was a kid, I apparently took the dog for a walk up and down the hallway that ran outside my bedroom. Not such a big deal, I guess, if you didn't know that I did this half-naked. My parents thought it was funny. I just woke up wondering where my pants were.

Anyway, back to talking in my sleep.

I never finished whatever I was writing (speaking?), but I remember I was writing novels, at least what my kid's brain thought were novels. I read a lot, so there's a chance I was only re-telling what I'd read, but I prefer to think not. Ever since then (and there has been a lot of since, since then), I have been perplexed, even frightened, by the creative process: where do these words come from? Where do these ideas come from? My pals Kominski and Shawn see the world in much larger terms than I do, and they can conceptualize grand epics and schemes that I can't fathom. I work, I think, more locally: starting small. Often, I start a poem mentally before putting pen to paper, sometimes months before. A word or two, or maybe a phrase, will appear in my head and stick there: go 'round and 'round. What's funny, at least to me, is that they are visible, not conceptual, not a bunch of letters. I see these words, and sometimes they are not even in logical order, or they appear and disappear.

This is how my most current poem created itself: a couple of words that bounced about until one day, while stuck in traffic on the way home, those words were joined by other words, and they together formed an idea of some sort. Waiting for the traffic to move, I frantically searched my car for a notebook and a pen so I could snag those words before they disappeared. I also came up with the title: "Disclosures." Then, as I started driving again, the form of the poem appeared, and I could not wait to get home to type the thing up.

So far, the poem has gone through three or four revisions, and I hope to get some feedback from some writer friends next month. I still do not know for sure what the poem is about, but it is a work of fiction. Here it is, for good or bad. Note, also, that the title is now "Disclosure"--singular.

Disclosure

There are things to be discussed:

How the girl who broke my high-school heart never
quite faded even decades after her cheerleader’s dress
pushed once against my hand, and how from that night on
love for anyone was defined unfairly.

For years I remained overly soft in the face of danger,
unable to choose between flight and the possibility
of cotton pleats pressed between my thumb and forefinger,
pom-poms brushing my thighs, the taste of athletic
salt on my upper lip.

Such do we carry—definitions birthed of suggestions
that covered the football field, that burdened not just the loving
but the eventually loved. But now, as I feel the curve of
your lower back in my hands, I am grateful: for that one
moment, for the burden, for this.

I have not yet determined if more is needed, if the pacing is right or if the ending happens too quickly. And, though it is fiction overall, there are elements of actual occurrences there. And this, too, amazes me about writing: how a mind can carry details, those facts and occurrences we often dismiss as trivial, until they are reborn, disclosed.