There are days, there are days, when abusing,

claiming, needing all seem … it was a nudge

from your knee to spread my legs wide, taking

a knot of my hair in one hand, a smudge

of your cum drying on my cheek; such sweet

obscenities. There were days, there were days

when those urges all seemed worth it; to mistreat

me was to love me … That orgasmic haze

when gods would speak … But without alcohol

those words, like those urges, came less and less.

Chekhov’s Black Monk: madness is genius, child.

Cirrhosis, though? Organs giving out? Small

little choices since I’ve stopped saying yes.

Poet without words. Detritus defiled.

][][

Notes:

Anton Chekhov’s novella, The Black Monk, talks about the destructive nature of the creative process, when the titilar Black Monk appears before the scholar Andrey Kovrin, who cannot tell if the Monk is indeed a supernatural entity or a product of his overworked insomnia, but becomes key to his mysticism, romanticism.

“My friend,” the Monk tells Kovrin, “Healthy and normal people are only the common herd. Exaltation, enthusiasm, ecstasy—all that distinguishes prophets, poets, martyrs from the common folk—[which] is repellent to the animal side of man—that is, his physical health. I repeat, if you want to be healthy and normal, go to the common herd.” Thus creativity becomes a psychic ailment concerning dreams and delusions. The romanticism of madness. “I went out of my mind,” Kovrin explains, “I had megalomania; but then I was… interesting and original. Now I have become more sensible and stolid, but I am just like every one else: I am—mediocrity.”

I am an alcoholic and have been sober for almost seven years. After 33+ years of heavy drinking I was faced with the same choice that everyone in Recovery is faced with: if I’m serious about surviving I must cut out all the “wet” places, the self-destructive habits and routines, that I used as excuses to drink. Unfortunately this also meant that I’d have to come up with a whole new creative process and that inspiration has yet to materialize. This isn’t a, “poor me,” statement, I knew from my first day at AA that I might lose my inspiration, but there didn’t seem much of a choice short of dying homeless and friendless in the Poverty Ward of my local hospital.

Can a poet even call themselves such if they cannot write poetry? It’s not that I can’t physically string words together, rather I’ve lost the urge; all those delusions of grandeur that drove me forward seem … pointless. Lust and the gods have fallen silent. Yet even this is me being kind to myself. Maybe one day I will find new inspiration … something more than just lamenting that the old ways are dead. It hasn’t happened yet, but perhaps one day. Perhaps.