Unintended

This is my submission for day 13 of The Halls of Pandemonium from Bradley Ramsey.

It's a longish-worded prompt about muses, so you may be better clicking the link to read it.

It's one that I'm not really sure how to approach, so I'm just going to write it as is, in one burst, with no real editing other than spelling errors. This also means it could just turn into an elongated ramble that overshoots or completely misses the brief:

Sometimes they're there,
sometimes not.
They come in different guises
often when not expected.

Rousing me sometimes from sleep.
The reason a pen sits by my bed,
thoughts and rhymes
wrapped up in dreams.

They wake me with a message:
"Take notes.
Remember those things,
the ones not weird enough to stay".

To look for a muse, or is it muses?
It's a strange thing.
Do they exist outside of my mind,
are they dead, spirits and ghosts?

Are they versions of me
that I've buried and that lay dormant?
Voices that tell me to write what they hold,
so that they don't burn,

and melt me from inside-out?

Sometimes I feel them,
a little like now.
Moving around, shuffling inside me,
in my brain, behind my rib cage.

Giving me little clues,
breadcrumb trails which
might lead to a poem, a story
or something I'd rather not see.

Dead friends and relatives,
they join too.
Are they muses,
or just reminders, reminiscences

a cue to write things down
so that I don't forget
past versions of myself
long locked away?

I unlock them and they provide more fuel,
often dragging me back to
drinking on trains, drinking for years.
Not stopping.

Causing only pain and hurt.

They love the pain,
though are not sadistic.
They want it on the page,
soul squeezed out.

Ink drips like blood, forming
words and pieces
that always take something from me,
but leave me a sense of calm,

a place to breathe.

Sometimes I open the door,
looking to leave the house.
Dead musicians line up;
Cobain, Lanegan, Cornell, Staley

occasionally John Lennon, with
George Harrison beside him,
singing just a line or a word
before leaving.

They know it's a spark,
a starting point, leading 
to something that day,
unplanned but eventually written.

I often feel I'm a pretend poet.
I do it mostly by feel
(I feel this piece drifting right now),
but feel pretty clueless.

Expecting each time I share something,
that it will be torn up and spit upon
That the words I string together
recognised as poor attempt

at regaled art form.

The voices, whispers,
the lines, songs and visions of
past versions
help me see there's some worth there.

The images that return;
the hurt;
holding relatives as they 
forever leave

failed marriages,
those who I couldn't save.
Dreams like bulls,
come to gore me,

that I may then write again.

I don't know if these are truly
muses that come to me.
They make me feel things though,
and maybe that's their purpose.

I don't think I love or hate what they are,
but without them

my ink would surely run dry.

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