One of the best things about being a writer is having writer friends. This week’s guest post features one of my outstanding writer friends: Jean Cook and her Synaptic Jazz. I trust you all will enjoy it as much as I do! Please keep in mind that All Rights are Reserved on this poem. If you’d like to contact Jean about her poem, you can find her at her website.
October 28, 2010
(in honor of Rosanne’s signed book contract)
(edited version)
by Jean Cook
Each neuron
in your head
aims to stop dead
your saboteur.
Ganglia thick like
Medusa’s snake hair
their dendrites lively, aware
aquiver, writhing,
release, receive enzymes
time and again and time
firing with willpower
every minute, every hour
firing, conspiring,
aspiring to inspire to aspire.
Never flogging your noggin,
snap-crackle-pop,
your impulses don’t stop
rapid fire rat-a-tat-tat
whadya think about that?
about this?
snapping across the synapse gaps
across the abyss
nerves with verve and flair
analyze, improvise
how to get from here to there,
from there to here?
Brain smiles and waves
staves off the fear
strolling la-di-da
past the amygdala.
A shower of brainpower
lightning paths cutting swaths
across your gray matter
connecting a smattering
of what’s mattering,
of this, of that,
so much going on under your hat
brimming full
of natural chemicals
of dopamine,
know what I mean?
Brainstorms
are the norm.
Your methodical plotting
not plodding
around the writer’s block
steady as a rock
steady as you go
the ideas flow
axon to axon, flow on
past snake brain
the electron convoy conveys
an energy load along vertebrae
neverendin’ at the tendons
now going far
going intramuscular
through bicep, tricep,
funnels into the carpal tunnel
through your finger,
through your pen
and then
ideas swirl
into the world.
Creativity,
It’s cerebral, baby.
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[…] with an email I’d received from my writing buddy Jean (the one who wrote that outstanding poem Synaptic Jazz). She’d attached a New York Times article with this note: “Made me wonder whether the […]
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