Brainstorm
May 6 2014


The brainstorm starts
in a far-off thunderhead,
black anvil cumulus

electric heart.
How ominous
when the barometer fell, temperature dropped.

How unsettled I felt,
pressurized thought
like dammed-up static charge.

Fireworks 

went off in my head,
spewing words
like comets, sparklers, exploding stars.

Synapses crackling with light,
concussion bombs
that left me deaf, and blind.

The page was a mess,
red lines, and palimpsest
illegible scrawl.
Rejected sheets, tightly balled
hurled like hailstones.

We sat around the table
to problem-solve.
"Brainstorming", they called it,
slumped in our chairs
well after dark,
cold coffee
in paper cups.

In the aftermath
of sturm und drang
the world washed clean, 
my body sagging
mind at peace.

The unnatural silence, blue-rinse sky,

rain-drenched earth

steaming dry.

And then
a flutter of leaves

a freshening gust.

And just as suddenly, sun.

There is nothing more to this poem than seeing the word -- brainstorm -- and suddenly falling in love with it. (Or if not love, then a passing infatuation!) I had this immediate image of fireworks going off in my head, and felt compelled to see what I could do with it. The brain is, after all, an electric device -- synapses sizzling like lightning bolts, axons firing, neurones building up charge.

There is also something about the creative act here: the intensity and absorption you feel, oblivious to time and space. I live for this experience, and have heard many writers/artists concur: that feeling of flow, of channelling; like taking dictation, or watching your hand paint by itself. To the onlooker, nothing's doing. But meanwhile, worlds are exploding in your head. This is something external, and bestowed like a gift: as the Greek was visited by his muse, and the Roman his genius.

(On re-reading the poem, I'm starting to wonder about another subtext, completely unintended. After all, doesn't that last part -- the " pressure relieved, body sagging, mind at peace" -- sound an awful lot like after sex; the spent lethargic pleasure, lounging in bed? ...Just saying!)