Poetry and My Shallow, Shallow Mind

Sometimes I worry that I might have nothing to say. When I look at the works of other poets they seem to have so much that they want to share with you. Such profound observations on life and love and loss. Some can make a meditation on something marvellously heavy out of a glimpse of a spider's web on an autumn morning. Others are bursting with joy because of the sunset or the dewy grass at dawn. I saw a thousand poetic things while I was walking home from work this morning, but for some reason, most of what I try to translate into poetry when I work from these perceptions comes over as incredibly trivial and boring. Maybe what I see as poetic just isn't. Maybe I should be a photographer instead. Or a graffiti artist. Maybe, for somebody who likes to think of himself as really deep and serious, I'm just too superficial to have the thoughts a person needs to have to write poetry that engages other people. I do skate along on the surface of reality quite a lot. Most of my pain happened a long time ago, and not only have I realised that it was largely of my own making, I don't want it back. But I can fake a deep poem every now and then. Chuck in a bit of remembered existential angst, or borrow a meaningful scenario from television. The poetry goes over pretty well when I do that.

My girlfriend, as was, before our relationship fizzled out like a firework on a wet night in an empty garden, once said I had "hidden shallows". Most of the stuff sitting on my writing desk at home brings those shallows out of hiding.