Breaking up with the scene (free-write)

I want to break up with the poetry scene

It has been one of those relationships that looks cool at first

Everyone talking about how great you look together

How well you fit together

And that lasts long enough for you to get high from it

Floating from venue to venue on it

Then it becomes an addiction

You can’t get through the week without it

Soon you need it everyday

You get caught up in the surface of it

You try to go deeper but you fall into the abyss of it

The politics of it

The high school of it

You want to be on top

You want to be cool

You forget what it was all about in the beginning

You know…

Poetry

The way the words made you feel

The way that one poet made them dance

Or made them sing

Or made you think about things in a manner you never imagined

The way images were running through your head

Like the new version of Fantasia

But things changed

The moment you stopped writing what you felt

And began to write what the people want to hear

When it became a job

No longer a passion

When it was more about the competition

And less about the process

That is when it may be time to break up

Take a leave of absence to regroup

To reconnect with the art

And not the arena

Time to actually write poetry