to stop... that i may begin

inspiration has been failing me, and so i wonder, have i not been listening correctly? usually when it suddenly stops, it's because i have tried to usurp control over something that is meant to use me, not vice versa. usually because i try to control something that is created and born of chaos and imagery and symbolism and metaphor, and here i am trying to give it concrete word and form and grammar. here i am demanding of it dialogue and punctuation. and so i ask in what way i may change to be more open to the metaphor of meaning, the metaphor that is the ebb and flow of my life's tidal phases? i ask to stop, so that i may yet again begin.


All This And Heaven Too
by Florence + The Machine:



"And the heart is hard to translate,
It has a language of its own,
It talks in tongues and quiet sighs and prayers and proclamations,
In the grand days of great men and the smallest of gestures,
In short shallow gasps!

But with all my education,
I can't seem to command it,
And the words are all escaping me,
And coming back all damaged,
And I would put them back in poetry,
If I only knew how,
I can't seem to understand it,

And I would give all this and heaven too,
I would give it all if only for a moment,
That I could just understand the meaning of the word you see,
'Cause I've been scrawling it forever,
But it never makes sense to me at all.

And it talks to me in tiptoes,
And sings to me inside,
It cries out in the darkest night,
And breaks in morning light.
But with all my education,
I can't seem to command it,
And the words are all escaping,
And coming back all damaged,
And I would put them back in poetry,
If I only knew how,
I can't seem to understand it,

And I would give all this and heaven too,
I would give it all if only for a moment,
That I could just understand the meaning of the word you see,
'Cause I've been scrawling it forever,
But it never makes sense to me at all.

No, words are a language,
It doesn't deserve such treatment,
And all my stumbling phrases,
Never amounted to anything worth this feeling,
All this heaven,
Never could describe such a feeling as I'm having,
Words were never so useful,
So I was screaming out a language that I never knew existed before."