Finished

I didn't sit there staring at the final poem or call a friend and tell them i was done. I didn't even post a message on social media. My 100 days of writing project became a private affair and when I finished I kept it to myself, but it was more than that. I had no feeling of relief or accomplishment. I was finished with this large project that I had poured myself into, and yet when I finished I had no feelings about it. I was done and that was it.

I had planned out the final poem for about a month. I had figured out what it would be about and was only waiting for day 100 so that I could write it. Which brings up the question of when is something written. Was this poem really the work of day 100 or was it from day 70? Is a poem written when it is put on paper or when the idea is conceived? I cannot give the answer to that, but if I had to I would say it is the latter. I do most of my writing in my head. Often times the act of putting fingers to keyboard is a final motion. The draft, first revision, and sometimes the second or third revision have already happened in my mind before my index finger makes that first keystroke.



The final poem ended up being about everything that was unwritten. All the thoughts and ideas I felt too ambitious for me. Part of what inspired me to start this project was I saw a female jogger running. She was one of the most beautiful people I've ever seen and the thought that came to my mind was an allusion to John Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn, "If truth is beauty then you're the truest thing I've ever seen." It was dumb and cheesy and sounds like a bad pick-up line that one of one thousand people would understand, but it was like the inspiration of old. It came to me from seemingly out of nowhere. I kept trying to come up with more and better lines about this jogger lady, but I couldn't.

I didn't want to objectify her or write about he being born of the semen of a Grecian artist, but those were the thoughts swirling in my mind. It came to me finally that everything outside my windshield is an object; jogger, biker, motorist. Everything that on the road that isn't my is an obstacle impending my progress to my next destination. In many ways this is everything that is wrong with the modern world. We don't view other people as people. We view them as competition and obstacles that keep us from reaching our goals when in reality if we were a community, if we worked together, we could go even further as a society and a species.

That was one of the themes I explored quite a bit in my writing. It become a journal of sorts with a lot of underlying themes. There were phases where I thought I would never have another good idea and the writing felt more like a chore than a joy, and then there were the days when the words flowed, but for 100 days I wrote something every day. At the beginning of the project I would rise from bed and put the poem behind me to start the day. Occasionally revisiting it throughout the day and editing it until I was content with it, but during the later days I wrote mostly at night letting the poem gestate in my mind throughout the day.

Because of the nature of writing a poem a day this became a journal. A lot of the poems dealt with traffic in Northern Virginia and a few dealt with the two vacations I took while working on this project. At the beginning I sought out inspiration. I went to parks and hiked, to poetry readings, to historical places, to places of my youth, and a few other things that inspired me and became poems in this collection. Towards the end I stopped doing this. I fell into a rhythm of the poems becoming part of my daily routine and therefore I wrote about my daily routine. Which became another theme I explored. How much of our days are made up of routine, meaningless moments.

All that is left is to write an epilogue that isn't much different than this and maybe should actually just be this. I also have to put the 100 poems into one file so that they can be uploaded to Amazon or try to find a publishing company interested in publishing the entire thing. I will probably due the former because it is quicker and won't come with rejection, but whatever I do the 100 poems have to be put into one manuscript. And for the few people that have read this blog while I've been working on this, even though I am extremely sporadic with posts, and will continue to read this blog now that I am finish. On day 102 I will now share with you the final poem of this collection, day 100:

The Unwritten

The words left unwritten.

Discarded in the wasteland

of the mind. The darkest corners

of gray matter where worthy inspiration dies.

The glistening jogger whose beauty

started this all. Muse I apologize to you

for your poem was left unsung.

I wished to revisit the places of my youth

and journeyed back to one.

The past, a rotten apple remembered

shiny red.

Ambition to achieve ending in fear,

fear to succeed. Stillborn inspiration

left dead before drawing first breath.

What would have been if what was said

was unsaid? Erase all that transpired.

Replaced with the moments between,

the pause after exhale.

Wash away the was. Rip apart the is.

The never were is more interesting. 

Negative display of the world,

a reflection of the imagined.

The remaining question;

are the words the unwritten or

the yet to be explored?