Take the medicine and then ignore it. (attention breeds power.)
Take care of your body.
Take all your anger and direct it at the sickness within you—not to admonish it but to politely ask it to leave your body.
If it resists, visualise wringing it out by its slimy neck and throwing it out your window.
Cry.
Light a candle.
Release all ache within yourself—there is no need to fear something that no longer exists.
Know that you are now well inside.
Remember that you are born strong and healthy and that nothing should ever be beyond you.
Optional: pray (in whatever way you usually do)
Take many deep breaths and get a long, restful sleep.
I wish it were that easy. There is something unbecoming about not being in control of yourself. At times, it is a great release. But when you are unwilling—it can be a whole hell of your own making. Unfortunately, I don’t have a solution for you. I genuinely hate being ill at all costs. But I can tell you that I haven’t written poetry in at least two weeks—a very long time.
Being ill calls for rest days and times of healing, but what do you do when you still have all that energy pent up inside you with no real place to go? I have to scream to stop it from turning on me. The line between restful and restless is thinner than a slip of paper. You would think writing helps—it can, until you begin to question your condition and become impatient at your slowness and inability to recover. When my body deviates from the perfect actor of actions I perceive it to be, all that’s left is my inability to accept that the damage won’t stop me.
Unfortunately, Life cannot stop for anyone. So, even in my recovery, I write.
Recently, everything has been almost poetic. The sun affects my mood. We are both ambivalent and awfully hard to please. I’ll be sickly in a second and suddenly well in another. April, and all its things, have thoroughly overstayed their spring-fantasy-welcome. I have just been suffering with no art to show for it. The plight of the poet has always been to be wretchedly rewarding.
I often find that making poetry from pain is more rewarding than ache. The price of finding words for an intangible wound is paid in introspection and occasional regret. Despite that, I always end up writing from pain. Capturing agony is easier when it has already passed you by. (always 20/20 in hindsight)
Depicting pain and all its ugly grace is an art form in itself. To do it right, one should stay far away from anything that compares it to beauty. Pain and beauty coexist but should never unify to create something, as it lessens the impact of both subjects. Beauty, in its own right, is brutal, just as pain can also take your breath away.
There is no good way to lace pain into your poetry—the only real way it shines is when it is raw. No amount of embellishment can ever beat the bleeding gash.
Write about pain to acknowledge it.
Write about pain to never hold it again.
-swan