Pressed Flowers

Pressed Flowers

Writer’s block is like a chronic illness –never fully gone and always ready to flare up. There was one week in September last year where it showed up with a vengeance. I had been gifted a new Moleskin Notebook and it sat on my desk mocking me. So I decided it was time to finally leave the house and find inspiration in the city. The Lower East Side called to me, so I ventured out, and stumbled around the neighborhood until I found some friends at Benson’s. 

There was some artist event that night that was coming to a close, and people were drunkenly filing out. I was a few IPA’s deep when I felt the atmosphere inside the bar begin to shift. Ghosts of alcoholic poets past seemed to occupy the empty bar stools. Dylan Thomas quotes echoed in my booze-filled brain. 

Somebody’s boring me; I think it’s me.

I was secretly hoping something more exciting would happen. I desperately needed a hit of inspiration, but instead I settled for a few drags of a cigarette. I walked outside the bar and found my friends conversing with someone I didn’t recognize. He had a funny hat –some cross between a fedora and bowler hat. I asked for a closer examination and we started analyzing the social implications of wearing different kinds of hats. I’m sure half of what we said was nonsense but it was amusing nonetheless. 

The night carried on and we found ourselves alone and walking in circles around the block. I checked my phone for the first time in what seemed like hours (quite the feat for me lately), and realized it was 3 AM. The city was slowly falling asleep. Everything was closed and almost everyone had gone home. 

He had planned on driving home, but like me, had had one too many drinks. We walked to his van talking about nonsense again –something about wave frequencies and infrared light. I crawled into the front seat and curled into a lopsided ball, so I could still face him as we talked. We talked about love and grief. How both conjured up the most extreme of emotions. 

He had recently finalized his divorce and much to say about loss. I was a little younger than him, and a lot less experienced, so I listened eagerly and took a few mental notes. I told him his story reminded me of Max Porter’s Grief is the Thing with Feathers –a book on grief and loss inspired by a Ted Hughes poem. Strange how another dead poet found his way into my mind. 

I pulled out my phone and recited a few lines I had highlighted on my electronic Kindle version. “Moving on as a concept is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows, grief is a long term project.” Porter’s words sparked a long conversation on healing and life after heartbreak. I mentioned that I relied on my writing and poetry to process grief, and that most of my “good” poems were inspired by darker emotions.  

He asked me to read something I had written. I pulled out my phone again and read an old piece. I mentioned that I didn’t have anything too recent because I was blocked. He understood and mentioned that often times muses are hard to find, but will show up in the most unexpected of places. He spoke like a writer, although he defined himself as a visual artist. But I was curious and asked if he was also a poet. Turns out he was.

He did his own version of spoken word poetry and recorded his pieces with his phone. I asked him to play something for me and he did. I was fading away at this point of the night, or morning I should say –it was almost 5AM –and I could barely keep my eyes open, but I strained to stay awake and listen. We were mid-poem and I remember hearing the line “you don’t pick ‘em, you stupid kid. you grow ‘em” before falling fast asleep. 

A few hours later, I woke a little startled and confused. I had fallen asleep on the poor guy’s arm in the middle of his poem. He was calmly scrolling on his phone and turned to smile at me like this was all very casual and normal. But all I could think about was the fact that I had fallen asleep in a stranger’s van and spent the night. He drove me to the nearest subway station and I slowly made my way home. 

Then the words came. So many of them. Overflowing and unending. I couldn’t pull out my notebook fast enough. I had found a new muse. The cure to my writer’s block. I had jot down bits and pieces of what he had said in the van. Most of it was nonsense, but a few phrases lent themselves to poetry.

You don’t pick ‘em. You grow ‘em.

Sometimes my mouth can't keep up with my heart. 

I see people as sparks and hues of color.

A few days passed and I had already written three or four poems about our fleeing moment. Strange to think about how inspiration can come from the strangest of people in the most mundane of places. But a nagging thought clawed at the back of my mind. Fleeting moments are fleeting moments, they end just as soon as they start. What would I do when my newly found inspiration had run its course? I didn’t plan on seeing or speaking to him again. 

Fast forward to almost a nine months later, and this stranger I had met on a random September night had now turned into a dear friend. He continues to be a source of inspiration when there are lulls in my writing. I have yet to tell him about the poems he inspired, but I have a feeling he knows. I think from the moment I heard his name I knew it would be poetry – Dylon Thomas, except spelled with an “o”. 

Here’s one of the first poems I wrote after my night spent in the van:

[pressed flowers]

Something you told me

months ago at 3am in your van.

We’re not the same anymore,

but I remember everything you said.

“Don't you know 

you don’t pick ‘em.

You stupid kid,

you grow ‘em.” 

But what happens 

when weeds 

wrap around 

and choke you…

and the soil depletes,

and the sun doesn't reach.

And what if months of too much rain

turn into a spiritual drought.

Do you still leave 

the flowers dying there?

Or do you try

and pull ‘em out?