Into The Void, I Wrote

It was 1971, the Vietnam War was still raging. The world, split neatly into two parts were pointing fingers and hurling accusations at each other.

Fathers looked away from sons who did not want to fight. Mothers lit candles and said prayers as politicians lied and postured and posed for cameras, casting shadows of fear across the lives of the citizens who didn’t know much but trusted greatly - as they didn’t understand what else to do.

It was in this little maelstrom that I wrote my first poem. My first purge that neither rhymed nor read very well but housed in its short form so much emotion that I could not stop the tears from falling onto my notebook as I wrote the lines.

It was a time of doubt and depression. A time of unlimited questions and few answers and those often lost in the haze of drug use and self-medication.

I needed to be heard; first by me and next by a world that took too many of us for granted.

Who saw the younger generation as so much fodder. To be used to forward an agenda.

To be lost to prove a point that the world was not a safe place. To be lied to because we lacked the value of the more financially set backers who supported the machine that ran an otherwise fine nation.

The age of Flower Power was receding and the notion of free love had been adulterated to the point that it all seemed rather seedy. That we loved freely had been twisted into its counterpart, that we loved without purpose and therefore negated the whole thing.

So, we were tossed out initially; easy enough as we weren’t strong enough yet to make a difference. Ignored for years until who we were and how we thought was of little importance. It was our collective financial might that would eventually matter.

We were only then courted as our parents had been; all past transgressions forgiven - just a product of the times.

Our opinions asked for. Our ideals duly noted. Our votes appreciated and rewarded in kind and all seemed well.

But in truth, few escaped from this period unscathed. I certainly didn’t.

My first poem spoke of love unrequited. Of passion allowed to smolder until it snuffed itself out.

In truth, it was an awkward piece filled with attempts to use a poetic form to corral conflicting emotions into a single space and declare to the world that it needed to change.

A laudable goal for a 19-year-old counting the days when the lottery would call his number and ask him to embark on a journey, he wanted no part of. To submit to enlistment. To set aside life as so many others had done. Without a reason offered or proof that there was any point in the exercise.

It was the first of many poems written during that time. When time itself blurred and weeks passed without distinction. One season ending and another beginning with little notice.

My heart hadn’t yet broken, though it was tested. My mind still functioned, albeit creaking all the time as one ill-fated decision careened into another, like pool balls in a badly struck break.

I was for all intents and purposes not really there. Breakfasts came and went. Bus rides culminated in long walks for I had often taken the wrong one.

Dreams ceased. Food became bland. Moments of lucidity struck me with such suddenness that they shocked me until finally, I realized that change, however slight, however impermanent had to happen.

Eventually, these first few poems did their work. They coalesced raw emotion into renewed faith that change was possible.

That yesterday would remain where it started and ended and tomorrow, for whatever it might be worth, would be given a chance to succeed.

Ironically, they stopped in 1972. As my flight from JFK to LAX taxied on the runway, the poetic well dried up or for lack of a better term, gave up the fucking ghost, with all lingering ideas relegated to “long-term parking” where they would remain for almost 40 years.

I think it interesting that a poem began my literary journey as well as set in motion the mental gears necessary to compartmentalize my life so that I could both function as a human being and as an artist.

Who would have thought that the pain being exorcised during those first few attempts would allow me the freedom to realize a future where they would take on a much greater role in who I became.

A poem is not an essay or a white paper, a non-fiction article on mortgages, or a screenplay about alien detectives who come to Earth to solve a crime, and yet all these things were made possible by those first few lines of verse.

My love of words and belief in their healing powers guided me out of a dark period.

They allowed who I was and who I might become to join together in a fight against the “forces of darkness,” a.k.a. self-doubt, uncertainty, and hopelessness, which, as the plot would decree, would eventually be vanquished. I never stopped writing, never stopped growing as a writer, never stopped believing I would arrive.

I owe a great deal to my first poem and will be forever grateful for its completion. And many years later, when that poem was ceremonially burned as a gesture of closure to that period of my life, I said my thank yous and farewell and bid it peace and love in its next life.