national poetry month continues here with these glittering gems from Ryan Creery, long-time spiderweb contributor and all-around incredible writer. Ryan's writing prompt for us today is as lovely as his poem, Diamonds, and we are delighted to share both with you here:
Close your eyes and breathe in and out ten times. In 30 seconds do these three things:
1. Picture yourself in a place.
2. You hear something
3. You feel something
Write a haiku about your experience.
Diamonds
If we could tell time in pounds,
maybe then we could find strength
in losing so much
to the weight of our world;
like Atlas, hold high our wounds
and our losses, tremble-kneed.
In pounds, we could sift through
the ton of bricks it finally took
to say I love you or I hate you
to the reflection, to the rainy day,
and the gray that frayed our safety nets.
Go ahead and spend the weight of an ocean
waiting for your brain to step in and say,
“Hey, I’ll take it from here,”
when your heart can’t stop bleeding
through your sleeves.
Or let go,
drop it like a piano from the 15th floor
so it shatters so loud,
crash-land and burn
with the cries of all the
authors, painters, dancers,
poets, and the broken-hearted,
who carry the weight to find beauty
in the mess we’ve made of this world;
Diamonds who shine under pressure,
turn rot into wine,
and create art against the bitter winds of change.
Anyone can sparkle in the light,
it’s only heroes who can be brilliant in the darkness.
Ryan Creery started writing as a way to turn his own darkness into light. Now he wants his writing to be more active; to work more and fight more. He believes our individual creativity can become a way for us to bridge our communities together, and he hopes to help become one of those bridges. By day, Ryan is a corporate copywriter and contributing writer for The Broke Ass Bride. He has been published with Eber & Wein, The Huffington Post, and Gay Flash Fiction.
Ryan Creery at Spiderweb Salon's Fourth Annual Winter Formal | photo by Geoffrey Ussery | 2017