Writers often talk about their Muse. These creatures are always not well defined. Are they real people, or spiritual guides? Maybe they are both. I wrote a whole book about my Muse, whose name is Laura. Here is an excerpt from that book, which describes what it feels like to write sometimes. Even with a Muse’s assistance.
“Laura is coming. The pressure is rising; you can feel her dark and minky presence. Ah, feel her fingers clutch your shoulders. They are hard and curved, like the talons of a strong black bird.
She squeezes, compresses, releases, compresses. Now her hands are moving, they grab and tear at your flesh as they pull you to her lap. You sit on her lap as she squats low to the ground.
You squat together and grunt together. You are birthing together, another child, another story for Laura’s hungry mouth. The story presses hard upon your bowels. Drops of blood fall on your feet, yours and Laura’s. You are opening together, you are splitting in halves; soon there will be four of you, then eight, sixteen.
Laura drops beneath you and lays flat on the dusty earth. You spread your legs over her and give bloody birth to strange reptilian creatures who drop like candies off an assembly line into her waiting mouth.
“Aah,” sighs Laura as she chews and sucks their birdy bones clean.”
(©2000, Eating Mythos Soup: poemstories for Laura.)
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