;
The Martinet
Something flipped a switch.
Something turned on some light, closed some circuit
between me and my creativity
and I came alive.
I can’t say it’s not painful
I can’t say it’s always pleasant.
But it’s the most important thing
that’s happened to me in years.
What evil circumstance,
what pressure in my life
acted like a winepress, to tamp my words
into an inchoate mass
of sludge inside my brain?
The winepress is broke,
the pressers have gone home
to clean their feet of my discarded thoughts,
and I am free.
Colors are brighter, and the days
are far too short.
People look at me
As if there’s something different in my face.
Sleep is intermittent.
Work trudges on as usual,
in many ways my life is just the same;
But my fingers itch,
My mind is restless,
My heart aches with a constant, dull ache.
My brain writes words, even when I’m doing other things.
The martinet in the back of my brain-
the one who lives at the base of my skull
and says “don’t do that, don’t think that,
don’t feel that, what will others think?
It’s not your place, you’re crossing a line-“
is mercifully, unaccountably silent.
He is not missed.
;
Becky Sirrine is no kind of published poet. She has been a Legislative Assistant at the Arizona Legislature for the past twelve years. She recently found her poetic voice again, after a long hiatus, and has been utterly unable to shut it up. She is a divorced mother of five, who lives in Mesa, Arizona, with two of her adult children, two of her four grandchildren, and her much loved and pampered three pet tarantulas. Read more of Sirrine’s work here.
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Very beautiful writing by a very beautiful poet.