21 November 2006

Genius

Last night, falling asleep at around 2 am (for no good reason other than that I kept deciding not to go to bed because M wasn't here and it seemed boring to do so without him), I thought up some really excellent lines of poetry.

But I was too lazy to turn on the light (it's not, as it should be, at the side of the bed, it's at the foot of the bed, so involves getting out of toasty duvet covers and lunging down the length of the bed (it has to do with outlets)), so I just lay there and told myself that I would write it down in the morning, and fiddled around with the line breaks in my head, happily (delusionally) confident that these words were indelibly written into the gray matter.

But now, in the cold light of morning, do I remember a word of it? (You knew this was coming, clever reader, didn't you?)

I do not remember a word of it.

I think *maybe* it had something to do with clouds. Or matchsticks. But it wasn't cheesy, it was brilliant. It had rhyme, even. Clever rhyme, and subtle undertones of political commentary, and literary complexity that would have any New Critical scholar rubbing her hands together with glee. All this in just a few short lines.

It would have taken the literary world by storm.

2 comments:

Philip Vogelzang said...

Robin:

Robin:

I've experienced a similar phenomenon while sleeping. Only it's music. Playing at loud volume, usually a grand, sweeping epic piece, of course achingly beautiful. Then awake, I can't remember any lyric or tune. Just the feel.

It would have been great......

pv

Anonymous said...

my brain often fools itself like this with lines of poetry and facing the same light dilema as yourself, so to combat this phenomenon i text the lines to myself since my phone is usually right on the night stand