"I killed someone"
I cried
The Dreamer
The Wanderer
The one whose imagination
Rivals that of the Gods
I never meant to
I just wanted more control
Being a dreamer as it downsides
Determined to be disciplined
I trained
But in reality
I was killing my creativity
It happened so suddenly
Is what I tell myself
But I felt her dieing
Saw all the warnings
But I never fought for her
I watched as she slipped away
Tears stained her flawless face
"I forgive you"
She uttered
At that moment
Something died within me
Irreplaceable,
It can never be revived
My Muse is forever dead
And I eternally locked from it domain

The whimsical sculptures of Ken Nyberg
found throughout Vining and Otter Tail County
for example The Big Foot

Ken's busy hands have created pieces such as
a dancing knife and spoon with arms and legs
a huge doorknob floating in mid-air
giant pliers crushing a cockroach
a jumbo potted cactus, and a huge watermelon

His sculptures are made from scrap metal
old lawn mower blades
and other recycled materials

I would really like to see
the special sculpture honoring
his daughter Karen, a NASA astronaut

Also, the giant clothes pin
the alien with a rose
the cowboy welcoming you into town
and the spilled coffee cup

Ken Nyberg insists that there isn't any
special meaning behind most pieces.
He just creates them

Have you ever felt the hunger deep inside?
The monster with its insatiable cravings,
The claws that promise to tear you apart
That beast that calls itself inspiration,
The terror that says it is drive to create

Have you seen the ghost that lingers
Behind blue-tinted window-panes, in the breath
Of white vapor on a snowy day? Have you seen
‘It’, it that lives in heartbreak and mines it
For sepia-tinted photographs and
Confusing poems?

I’ve seen it on sunny days, in the way warmth
Lights me up inside - though even more than that,
It’s the memory-hued colors of California afternoons
It’s the way those colors look on print, even though
I can’t ever capture its feeling

And that’s what it is, isn’t it
The reach to put the unexplainable into words,
The unimaginable into pictures
The pain of it into being

Certainly, AI

isn't the future, it does not --


escape from what is.

Creativity is an opening,
A struggle fraught with doubt,
Unlikely to produce something beautiful,
Yet reverberations mount,
A gathering of half-ideas now
Open to others to make once
Yours, fully theirs, a bow
To the dimming pulse
Of an idea meant to endow

Flowing across the page.
Everything comes to me at once.
The colors dance upon the paper.
Like a performance on a stage.

The only one in the audience is me.
Observant and thinking about the next step.
I am voiceless.
So I let the dancers speak for me instead.

As a voice for the voiceless.
They understand my heart.

Colors flowing across the page.

The colors dance upon the paper.

The only one in the audience is me.

Watching as it becomes alive.

"Why poetry?" You asked

The answer was immediate, as a flood.

"Because words are my favourite method of creativity. As an artist, I learned there are over 16 million colours and no combination of any number of them will ever mean more than three short words. Of those sixteen million colours only one matters to me. The colour of your eyes; and no painting will ever mean more to me than 'I love you'." I said in reply.

When did children lose their love of learning?

When they were told to conform,
To forget their being,
To discard interests, agency, creativity

My own complicity
In the stifling of identity

Authenticity, a digression of the self,
A dissolution of swarming
Complexities

When did I gain my love of learning?

The burning crucible
Of curiosity

Set aflame by rejection of conformity

Constraints, curriculum, crushing expectations
and a world disintegrating
fires of digressions

When is conformity an expression of authenticity?

When is authenticity just another form of conformity?

I used to know how to draw.
When your mind is free,
creativity flows like water.

Imagination ran wild,
translating through my hand
to sketch what my mind saw.

No school taught me how to draw.
I just drew!
from imagination.

Imagination is precious.
It’s your brain
running a kind of creative program.

Now my brain only responds with solutions
because trouble,
trouble always comes first.

Suddenly,
I don’t know how to draw.
Because my mind
is focused on solving problems.

A perk? A burden?
Of being an adult
in an adult’s world.

But is this writing
a sign my creative program still runs?
Or just a way
to cope with crowded thoughts?