A Recipe for Creative Endeavor
©April 2nd, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
I am hopeless at recipes
I don’t understand the lingo
I hate being confined
By tight measurements.
So, I shall write this
With a recipe in mind
Which I shall not follow.
Take your dull despair,
Pluck it from the thing close by,
Squish the little purple globes
Into a nice, quivering jelly.
Stick a finger in it
And taste the purple of it.
Is it not delicious,
And terribly sad?
Add a dash of dashed hopes
A splash of laughter
Sugar it over with dreams deferred,
Add a pinch of naïveté.
Mix and mix, till your brain grows
Tired of repetition, then set aside
To cool and set for a few days, maybe years.
Go to sleep, clear things up within.
Sleep will crystallize everything.
Wake up, perhaps refreshed,
Perhaps, even duller
Than when you went to bed.
If your dreams were full of color
Mix in those, as well,
If they flowed like molasses
Scoop up a bit, add that to it.
Pick out an A minor chord
On your Ibanez. Pluck the notes
Till they fall, ripe and fat
Into your waiting hands.
Chop the notes up into irregular
Cubes, with roots and fifths,
And toss them into the mix.
Crumble some sharp ginger
(All those “constructive criticisms,”
You hated to have pointed out,
But you knew were good for you.)
Crystallized with the sugar of
Someone’s love for you,
Hence the words which stung,
But wrung from you your
Best self.
Bitter chocolate is nice,
But sweet is nicer,
So dark goes in with milk,
Nothing that is sweet
Is without some bitterness
Like a sombre note sounding
A warning:
Do not be too complacent.
Sit back, fold your arms
See what arises.
Things that rise from pain
Can sometimes turn out
Pleasure-filled, succulent,
Luscious, dense with riches.
And sometimes, they collapse,
If they do, forget about
What you’re making.
It wasn’t that necessary,
After all.
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Today is Day 2 of NaPoWriMo 2017, and the prompt was to write a “recipe poem.” I found it hard.
