STUCK BETWEEN MY THOUGHTS

STUCK BETWEEN MY THOUGHTS

I tried to speak, but my tongue just froze,
I tried to breathe, couldn’t feel my nose,
The thoughts in my head were swirling like wind,
I couldn’t find where to even begin.
The words were there, but they wouldn’t come out,
They tangled themselves in a whirlwind of doubt,
And everything I wanted to say,
Seemed to gather its thoughts and run away.

My thoughts multiplied by nine,
I tried to catch one and make it mine,
But every time I reached for a word,
It vanished before it could be heard.
I grabbed at the air, but the air was too thin,
I couldn’t get out, and I couldn’t get in,
I jumped and I ran till my feet were sore,
Yet somehow ended up where I’d been before.

The world kept spinning, passing me by,
While I stood beneath an indifferent sky,
People were moving, their lives carried on,
But I was still standing where yesterday had gone.
The same old place where I said goodbye,
To the dreams I had written across the sky,
And nobody noticed that I was still there,
Trying to catch all my words in the air.

I think I am stuck in a place of my own,
Where words have a language I’ve never known,
I can’t seem to speak, smell, hear or see,
The things that are waiting inside of me.
I know there are stories, I know there are rhymes,
I’ve written a thousand, a thousand times,
But tonight every word has decided to hide,
And left me with nothing but thoughts trapped inside.

I asked my old pen, “What’s happened to you?
You’ve always known just what to do.”
It lay on the paper, refusing to write,
As though it had given up trying tonight.
I shook it and whispered, “Come on, don’t be shy,
We’ve got all these thoughts and they’re passing us by.”
But the pen simply rolled to the edge of the page,
Like an actor refusing to walk on the stage.

I opened my window and called to the breeze,
“Can you find me some words in the tops of the trees?”
The breeze blew my papers all over the floor,
Then laughed as it hurried away from my door.
I looked at the moon and said, “What about you?”
It answered, “I’ve got enough thinking to do.”
Even the stars wouldn’t lend me a rhyme,
They said, “Come back later, we’re busy with time.”

No matter what I do, I try with all my heart,
But something always stops me before I can start,
I search for the beauty, the sorrow, the pain,
Then find myself writing the same words again.
I want to make poetry that somebody feels,
That opens old wounds and allows them to heal,
That reaches a heart where the lonely tears fall,
And tells someone quietly, “You’re not alone after all.”

But how do you write when your thoughts won’t behave?
When every good sentence becomes a lost wave?
When yesterday’s words were as bright as the sun,
But today’s little verses refuse to be spun?
I wondered if poetry had finished with me,
If all of my words had decided to flee,
Had I emptied my heart of the stories I’d known,
And left all my unwritten dreams on their own?

Then something quite strange happened inside my head,
A little lost thought lifted up and said,
“You’re trying too hard to make everything right,
You’re frightening the words that would visit tonight.
Stop chasing perfection, just write what you feel,
Not every old wound needs a beautiful seal.
Sometimes the truth is a stumbling rhyme,
That finds its own feet in its own little time.”

So I picked up my pen and I started to write,
About all the words that had hidden tonight,
The tongue that had frozen, the air that was thin,
The world that kept turning while I couldn’t begin.
And there on the paper, to my surprise,
Was a poem I’d written before my own eyes.
I’d spent all that time thinking nothing would start,
While poetry had been speaking straight out of my heart.

And maybe that’s something I’ll never quite know,
Why some of my words come and others won’t flow,
Why thoughts multiply nine times and leave me confused,
Why some of my favourite words refuse to be used.
But one thing I’ve learnt as I put down my pen,
If the words disappear, they might visit again.
For even a poet who struggles to start,
Can write a whole story from a tangled-up heart.