Life for Poems or Poems for Life
by Ayşe Tekşen
When I first started this, I promised the poet I would control this. Wouldn’t let it conquer and ruin this world of mine. And he didn’t believe.
And he was right--
As always wise he is. I let poems take over. Over time, and now everywhere. Every sacred or sinful corner of my life is of poetry--
Under pillows, in dark colors, cupboards, multiple notebooks, on desks, tables, counters, receipts, napkins, drafts, walls, messages, in hearts, minds, eyes, over tongues, every second beats with poetry.
And I don’t know how to get rid of it.
The real danger is yet ahead. One day I will turn into a poem. I’m afraid and I will be just it. Only that. More meaningful, though, than the who or the what I am now or the space I occupy.
My mind will flow into it, and it will cost more than the smartest mindset—Set to wake to produce thoughts where poems are thought to be included.
But I’d disappear there if a poem would be a part or the result of a thought. It wouldn’t be me, and I’d definitely not be a poem.
A poem is not a piece of thought or a work of art; It is you merely or the essence of being called a human being. The essence, I will have it inside no matter which shape I’ll turn into in yours—Perhaps into a shape that cannot be bent, cannot be reduced to a scripture.
Write, he said, and you will stay, but try not to write, for it will stay even when you erase yourself.
And this I didn’t figure then.
When I first started this, I promised the poet I would control this. Wouldn’t let it conquer and ruin this world of mine. And he didn’t believe.
And he was right--
As always wise he is. I let poems take over. Over time, and now everywhere. Every sacred or sinful corner of my life is of poetry--
Under pillows, in dark colors, cupboards, multiple notebooks, on desks, tables, counters, receipts, napkins, drafts, walls, messages, in hearts, minds, eyes, over tongues, every second beats with poetry.
And I don’t know how to get rid of it.
The real danger is yet ahead. One day I will turn into a poem. I’m afraid and I will be just it. Only that. More meaningful, though, than the who or the what I am now or the space I occupy.
My mind will flow into it, and it will cost more than the smartest mindset—Set to wake to produce thoughts where poems are thought to be included.
But I’d disappear there if a poem would be a part or the result of a thought. It wouldn’t be me, and I’d definitely not be a poem.
A poem is not a piece of thought or a work of art; It is you merely or the essence of being called a human being. The essence, I will have it inside no matter which shape I’ll turn into in yours—Perhaps into a shape that cannot be bent, cannot be reduced to a scripture.
Write, he said, and you will stay, but try not to write, for it will stay even when you erase yourself.
And this I didn’t figure then.