Philip Vermaas is a professional copywhore, excessive drinker, lustful fool, fledgling editor, dilettante animator, occasional graphic designer, fatalistic romantic, self-indulgent poet, failing novelist, borderline mendicant, and bad son of the world. In addition to the poems he has cheekily published at his own Misfit’s Miscellany, his work can be read at Drunken Absurdity, online and in their first print issue, Underground Voices, BoySlut, The Weekenders Magazine, Issues 1 & 2, HorrorSleazeTrash, and Zygote in My Coffee. An extract of Philip’s novel Nourishment is forthcoming at Jungle Jim Magazine.
The Pen Is a Prison
By Philip Vermaas
be free of driven mind and thought’s ends,
I wanted just to be.
I told myself:
don’t write a poem.
And it occurred to me immediately
that I should sit down and write this.
The pen is my prison
precisely because
when I make matter of thoughts
it gives being meaning,
without which I feel
wasteful and ugly
and who then
can feel free to be.
The pen is a prison
but also the key.
I absolutely agree, the pen is indeed a prison and a key.
The pen is a prison, but when you are released it’s heaven.
Indeed, there is paradox in being held captive by the same device which can set one free. Nice piece.