Freewrite about absence, absenteeism, or absent things.
Start with real, ordinary absences, both abstract and concrete, then progressively larger absences, each growing in size and scope, even to the point of hyperbole, until you find an absence that feels larger than all other absences, larger than the world, larger than the universe.
Poems for Inspiration:
Harken, to the breeze which blows, and the words which flow, like a curlew’s cry on the evening wind.
Haunting, ever haunting,
till in the fading light, gone to memory.
Listen, beneath the moon-time glow, for the dance of silent wanderers, beyond the edge of hearing,
haunting, ever haunting.
Crying out in absent loss, gone to memory.
Glance, from below shuttered eyes, as wisps of sorrow vanish between decaying buildings, forgotten trees.
Haunting, ever haunting.
A remembrance of reality, gone to memory.
Sidle out of space or time, step from reality’s dream to the edge of darkness, balance on the edge that is
haunting, ever haunting
the stream of life that never was, gone to memory
Hear the curlew’s cry and pirouette on the edge of silence, till truth’s song cascades across the frontier,
to haunt, forever haunt,
on the periphery of existence, atop the wall of sanity, in memory’s future and history’s impending past.
Wait,
For the curlew’s haunting cry
and weep, for all that wasn’t and all that will never be,
gone to memory.
The Zingara Project 