March 25, 2026

At the still tender age of 23 years old, I wrote the following lines as part of a poem called "The End of The Flame."

What do I do when I reach the end of the flame?

Do I forget who I am?

Should I change my name?

Do I sell all these papers, books and notes?

Do I give one last interview and review what I wrote?

Granted, my proclamations here are pretentious given no one was trying to interview me about what I had written in my short life. In fact, only a small circle of friends and family had read any of the 1000 or so poems, short stories or novel fragments I had written at that time. Besides, why was I already worried about my creative fire dying? I had only been writing for six or seven years, was just beginning my graduate school years at West Virginia University (to be continued at Indiana University) and had yet to understand how studying literature would impact the creative juices within me.

I bring all of this up now, 64, retired, comfortable in a life out of any limelight (hold that thought for awhile), because I seem to be taking a lot of stock of my life . . . or at least the stockpiles I have accumulated, cataloging my music collection, my book collection, and most recently, my writings. Thus, rather ironically, forty years later, I am answering one of my questions from "The End of The Flame," reviewing what I have written. Since I am still in the middle of this project, I guesstimate a total of 2500 creative pieces, which, outside of one novel, four or five unfinished or unpublished pieces of fiction, fifteen to twenty satirical pieces written under a pseudonym, means the majority of these are poems, followed closely by the various blogs posted at this website. Through all of this, I can't help but realize that I am doing my own reader response analysis (grad school flashback alert) to the stuff I have written, understanding more and more, albeit maybe too late, the real David Fleming. A fear of losing the creative spark dominates as a major theme throughout my writing output, which this project confirms for my personal life.

(A quick side note: I could argue the same about a professional self-assessment, where creativity drove me through the challenges, inanity, and ennui that can define the work place. Heck, I recently wrote a letter of recommendation for a dear ex-colleague and, for awhile, it felt like pulling teeth. Why did I initially experience writer's block? Honestly, there is no easier template in the professional world than the recommendation letter: a standard five paragraph essay that identifies three great qualities of the requestor -- and the better they are, the easier that is -- sets them up, then fills in the examples.)

"The End of The Flame" was not my first contemplation of what I would do without the creative spark; it first appeared in 1980 via "Blank Page," in which I couched the loss of creativity within the loss of love. Humorously, at eighteen I had even less experience with love than with creative burnout:

I always felt I could tell you

The ways I'd feel so true,

But I'm staring at a blank page over you.

And later,

For you, I always thought I'd be able to write,

But this blank page just isn't right.

"Blank Page" certainly represents the best thing I wrote for those first few years, but the bar was low. It at least addressed an actual emotional reservoir, something "Futuristic Times" or "Slum Bum" never could. Eventually, the fragility of my creativity could separate from expressions of love and stand on its own through many more poems over forty years. Still, I'm not exactly comforted by the fact that such a theme has shown up twice in the last year on this website ("Intervals" and "Blunt").

The lines of "The End of the Flame" do seem more appropriate than ever. Retired with more free time than I could ever dream, I have grown restless with my writing. Anyone familiar with the output on this website will note the various ways that restlessness reveals itself. When five years ago, I might have gone five to six days between writing and posting something, now that interval is usually ten to fifteen days, at which point I'm frequently only posting relatively short poems, ones that bore me almost as quickly as they spurred me (I tend to be an organic writer, so the delay is in the inspiration, rarely in the delivery). The end of the flame approaches, requiring super-human effort to keep the pilot light lit.

So, damn the interviewer, here's a review:

Writing provided an outlet for this shy, introverted boy from a young age, and for awhile allowed me to stand out. In grade school, my teachers raved about my assignments that required us to write stories using randomly assigned words. I doubt the stories were that good, but my teachers openly congratulated my enthusiasm, with the positive feedback making my parents' happy, who then praised me even more for my creativity. I was the puppy getting a reward for doing something positive.

In Junior High (or middle school, depending upon your vernacular), I wrote mini-mysteries for the school newspaper. They featured the detective Smell-a-lot-Bones and his sidekick, Dr. clever-twist-on-Watson-long-forgotten. I can't remember any of the mysteries, let alone how clever they might have been, so unless Suncrest Junior High archived the sterling student papers from the mid-1970s, these are lost to history. Still, I do remember tasting a little bit of fame among my classmates.

However, when I got to high school, my creative writing disappeared from public view. Obsessed with pop and rock and roll music, that's when lyrics emerged as my medium of choice. I have no musical theory knowledge, so no musical accompaniments could elevate them from bad, droll versification. Unfortunately, or more likely, fortunately, many of my first 700 lyrics are long gone, tossed in one of my moves, stained by the immaturity of the writing (and probably the writer). The few I have saved are the ones that had some merit. However, as I reflect back on the titles of these lost poems (I kept a list), I know this idea of creativity was a frequent theme: "Creation", "Last Word"; "Flickering On And Off"; "Writing," the titles driving the point home. While most of my other lyrics broke the only rule every writing instructor preaches ("write about what you know"), this concern about my literary imagination had evolved into something I did know. Thus, 990 or so lyrics later, "The End Of The Flame," achieved enough to have me share it more broadly with friends and acquaintances. It even adorned my office wall for a time. It might have ended up in a very small, indie poetry publication. I can't remember and can't find any record.

However, as I am reminded too often in retirement, the creative impulse is a tricky one. Getting something out is only half the battle. What comes out can scare me, as in "how the hell did I come up with that?" Writing bears a potent power (why do you think the right wants to condemn it?), something destructive to bat down internal turmoil. 1987's "Invention" contains one of my most violent figures of speech used in this context:

When I lay you down on this crisp white sheet,

Do I create you,

Or you, me?

When I force this instrument across your face,

Do I leave my mark,

Or just yours?

Those lines, even if accurate to using pen and paper, scream to be discarded, suggesting a sadistic, sick mind. But, they haven't been because the sadistic, sick mind can't bear them to go away.

In more pathetic moments, the writing isn't destructive, just desultory, as with 1986's "Broken, Broken, Broken":

If gold was found in uncollected line

And in some broken chains of thoughts,

I would be the William Shakespeare

That all the future scholars taught.

Sometimes the only way to understand

What it is I believe and think

Is not to deconstruct the man,

But to read with a tall, stiff drink.

To paraphrase Elvis Costello, at 26 I "still haven't earned the weariness that sounds so jaded on my tongue." (Of course, Costello was 23 when he wrote "Alison, I know this world is killing you/Alison, my aim is true," so what the hell does he know?). My best defense: I had spilled a lot of mediocrity across a lot of pens and typewriters. Drinking probably was the only salvation. More importantly, am I wrong? More than 2500 poems, stories, blogs, whatever, might mean a million uncollected lines? That's a damn lot of a fool's gold.

One moment, I fought my creative demons, the next moment I caressed them like a care-free lover, here one moment, devilish smile on its face, yet gone moments later. I lamented the "Ones That Got Away" in 1986:

And I can't believe I didn't even write down their names,

The names of the ones that got away.

I can remember being told to always write it down

And to always keep a notebook around.

The idea that poems (or stories or novels) become living creatures is hardly mine, nor is the concept that they are children released into the world. That notion of a child will surface in some love poetry (yet another thought to hold), but I like it even without the conception of, well uh, conception.

When I really needed invention, such as when a good friend lost a loved one, I found myself lost for words (mostly), penning the self-centered "Letting Me Down" rather than the "[fill in the blank] you up." If one can't count on one's creativity to come up with a decent panegyric to comfort a close friend, then why have the fire burning anyway? In trying to comfort him, "Letting Me Down" did tap into a universal truth for writers:

You used to run wild in my mind like untamed stallions/

And when I lassoed a few of you, I found success/

Sometimes you were still a little wild despite captivity/

Others performed to their very best.

However, these stallions were of small comfort to my grieving friend. As a result my refrains lamented: "when the real issues hit/why are you always letting me down?" Ten years later, in "An Unrevealed Lyric," I was still haunted by my lyrical impotency in the moment. That one shall remain unrevealed.

It's only a few years after "The End Of The Flame" that I went through my first of several fairly long periods when I didn't write creatively and lost no sleep over it. However, the fancy never quite went away. After writing It's All Academic, and gaining a website to maintain, I finally acknowledged that writing was what I needed to provide brief moments of peace of mind, even if the same old concerns (and Frankenstein-like creations) of the 20-year old man pervaded. What this website did was encourage me to stop keeping these things under wraps (or under the bed, to use the Emily Dickinson reference) and to put them out there for people to read. However, the interminable periods of waiting and wondering what's been read, what's been thought, are intervals that could discourage the most confident of writers. As I wrote in September 2025, such gaps only increased the love/hate dynamic between me and the children I posted publicly:

Each interval grows a little longer,

Each interregnum more vacuous.

If absence makes the heart grow stronger,

Then this stupid poem should be miraculous.

There's a theme about fame and recognition that bubbles under most of these ruminations about inspiration, one that I plan to explore in a future installment of "A Life in Words Mostly Unread." Some of the truths that I now see as self-evident will need a little more time to emerge, but for now I recognize and appreciate the way the voice in my head (or more often my heart and even more often my soul) nags me to open up in the only ways I can, uncomfortable as that may be.

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If interested, fuller readings of the sources mentioned here are linked below (and available at the ever-expanding "The Blog Under The Bed").

"The End of The Flame"

"Blank Page"

"Invention"

"Broken, Broken, Broken"

"Ones That Got Away"

"Letting Me Down"

"Intervals"