Sorry

Now I'm NOT going up north. Readers of this blog are used to a certain amount of dithering, but this is getting out of hand. I just can't seem to pull it together.

I have a pile of half-read books sitting in front of me. I don't seem to be able to finish anything, or to focus. I'm sure it's annoying to others, but it's frustrating to me; I feel as if I'm slowly going mad. It doesn't help that I've stopped sleeping.

I keep starting to write things, which just fall apart. For example:

On the missing manuscripts

The echo of the past I sought was not your voice, but my own.
You were my audience, not my muse;
Whatever was left to express needed from me no words, just time.

I would hold in my arms a reflection of you
and repeat the words that once sprang from a younger man's lips
Yet it was not you I sought, but the younger me
for whom those words still rang true.

I burned the poems and walked away from myself.

The older me and younger me embarrassed each other.
The echo reverberated not in sound, but struck discord in me: I clashed.
There was not space enough; the poems had to go.

.........................
Ummmm. What the heck was that?!

I'm still hoping I can pull together some coherent thoughts for a post soon.