Break + Oblivion

I’ve spent the last three weeks not writing. Thinking about voice and style. My theme for this year is consistency (in retrospec the theme of consistency when not writing for three weeks feels a little ridiculous). I believe the consistency in style and voice is a missing part of my craft. The sun has started to rise before 7am which is helpful to my writing. My mornings are my only hour to write among the noise that is this doorless house.
Two people recently told me they enjoy my poems and writing but having met me expected the work to be funny. That’s what I spent the last three weeks wrestling with. I think funny is likely a simplification of wit. The poems I’ve written that would fall under that label is the letter to the conifer society. I like that letter aspect, we’re quickly losing the idea of the complaint letter/email. There’s something so funny about a futile topic. We draw these lines in life of what is acceptable and what isn’t. I suppose we do this for comfort, maybe that is what the point of the letters are, reading the lines of comfort and recognizing the pointlessness. Maybe I should try writing letter poems for a few weeks and see what comes out. I imagine the hard part is generating the friction in a pointless topic.
There’s some tragedy in comedy, I believe that is inevitable. What makes life funny is the futility of our time, even in the best moments which are important and that is what we strive for by living. There is oblivion waiting.