"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. . ."

Who even knows what that means? Sometimes I read Whitman as if he is really talking to me, as if he penned so many of those words right to me, to be read by my eyes; I like to think that his words were meant only for me. . .
One cannot conjure up the state of poetic emotion and thought, if only it were so easy to flip a switch and revert into such a pensive state. I drive along the snow-clotted streets late at night, nearly alone on Lake Street, smoking a cigarette as if it is the only thing to console me.

I often ask myself, "Why create?" Or, more specifically, "Why write?" What is it within me that compels to become the written word, which so easily and inconsequentially fall from my fingers on to the keyboard, hoping that some kind of enlightenment might come from pouring out this random semblance of phrases; does it mean anything?

I once read a quote from Sylvia Plath: "Why do I write?. . . . .I write because there is a voice within me that will not be still."

Restless voice of mine. . .

I am flooded with thoughts and reminiscences, not so contrived, as I drive or stand outside in the snow, but incidentally, they become stilted and trapped the moment that I attempt to sit down and actually write.
Somehow, to put a pen to a page and elaborate the confusion of almost-adulthood and the angst of post-college existence seems nearly impossible. . .
This path of self-discovery that so many of us find ourselves upon often becomes patronized and demeaned. . . .but I think that if we don't awaken to it well, something breaks and is lost forever.

None of this really even makes sense, even to my own mind, but I didn't expect it to make any sense. . .