opuses? opusai? opus

Just now, as I was about to fall asleep, and as I was contemplating my unwritten poem titled “Phantom Memory of a Hair in the Back of My Throat”, I asked myself a question out of the blue–if I could only write four poems in my lifetime, what would they be about? Don’t ask me how my near-unconscious mind came up with the number four. My answers came from the depths of my subconscious almost immediately. Love, loss, memory and poetry; these would be the subjects of my four opuses.

I started to wonder if memory and loss were too similar of subjects. I decided they were not, as loss would almost certainly have more to do with love, and memory would have more to do with the nature of reality. I refined my last subject, poetry, to include the nature of beauty. In my mind they are concepts intrinsically entwined.

Somewhere in these moments, I realized that I could remember a particular writing session (sometime in college) when I was most aware of my own poetic style and devices. I think that my writing now is pretty devoid of intention. I write when I feel like it, and there’s almost never a “point” unless it’s one that’s been “discovered” on the spot so to speak. Anyway, on this particular night, it was very dark, and either I could see a full moon, or it was one of those nights where the moon was nowhere to be seen. I don’t remember that part exactly. I do remember that I was writing about some mundane thing. A tree, I think, and I thought then that it was some of my best work. I often think that what I’m writing is some of my best work. (I have to, or it refuses to come out sometimes.)

Poetry has not been forthcoming the last month or so, and whenever I force it out (mindblurbs mostly) it’s been somewhere between drivel and doggerel. I’m not really complaining, just stating. I had planned to get some writing done tonight, but got as far as turning off the video game before I was distracted by some other thing. (emails, I think.)

2 Replies to “opuses? opusai? opus”

  1. To mangle perfectly good Latin, we can extend it to opera, operae, oprey (the ones that are written strictly to hunt and feed off the wallets of the public).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *