When I was first learning to uncover and use the power of my words, I was asked to respond to a prompt. In the instance I share with you today, the reference was the philosophical novel “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” composed by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche during the 1880s. In the section “On Reading and Writing” he proposed that…
“Of all that is written I love only what a man has written with his blood. Write with blood, and you will experience that blood is spirit. Whoever writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read but to be learned by heart.”
It felt appropriate at the time to respond in an older poetic form as poetry is one of the ways to bypass irrational arguments and speak to the spirit (heart) directly.
There’s love on this page, though I write alone, a vexing process where the soul may bleed to cleanse the heart while other poets read; For words, like blood begin within the bone. It’s something near a gluttonous release, transfusions from the marrow to the page, Yet mixed with longing quite akin to rage, (for) when muse is fresh we gorge until obese.
We mustn’t let fine words with pain congeal or stop the flow of passion on the page. Dissected thought still tender, broken, green, repaired with careful sutures will soon heal. Writing is trauma, though we gain command, the power to heal still lies within our hand. © Justyn W H Rowe 1999
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