I am a burnt out and long-term unemployed engineer who has had no luck on the job market. I've taken to writing a lot of poetry lately as a way to process my f

I am a burnt out and long-term unemployed engineer who has had no luck on the job market. I've taken to writing a lot of poetry lately as a way to process my feelings and it has been very helpful. I actually recently read the book How Music Works by David Byrne and I enjoyed reading his account of one of his creative processes. He said that he often begins by coming up with a vocalization, grunts or hums or breaths, that fits into a certain rhythmic pattern, even though it has no linguistic meaning at that point. He'll work to sharpen it, refine it, all without even trying to add words. Then, after getting that basic guttural rhythm down, he will begin to search for words that fit into it. This kind of syllabic constraint also reminded me of Oulipo, of which I've been a long-time admirer. Anyway, I started doing the same thing, and what I've been amazed with is the way the syllabic constraints cause you to sculpt and shape words and sentences that you sort of didn't even consciously realize were inside yourself. Just a quick example, I came up with the idea to have stanzas with a syllable structure (for each line) of 3, 3, 4, 4, 3, 3, 8. I was actually sitting in my computer chair moving my shoulders to the 3-3-4-4 part and even drew a sort of bastardized Morse code thing on a post-it note to make sure I didn't forget it. I also felt like I wanted a longer line at the end of the stanza, because I couldn't see how continuing the 3-3-4-4 pattern could reach anything that verbally felt "conclusive" -- if that makes any sense (it probably doesn't). At any rate, here [0] is the poem I came up with out of that experiment (warning: I'm not a poet, and this is totally amateur, but it was still enjoyable to write): ----- In my hand made of sand electric pulse, wavefront growing. Integrate mass and weight and the broken fragments of slate. Now tell me why do I ache for that which I don't know? Now tell me why do I ache for that which I don't know? In my mind fruit and rind fall away from trees on fire. Multiply time by land by the darkened lines of my hand. Now tell me why do I ache for one who I don't know? Now tell me why do I ache for one who I don't know? But do I really ache for one who I don't know? But do I really ache for one who I don't know? What do I really ache for can my kind ever know? Is it the chance to know her or the chance to know me? ----- [0] < http://suitdummy.blogspot.com/2016/07/ache4.html http://suitdummy.blogspot.com/2016/07/ache4.html > Many of the phrases from the poem were not ideas that I rationally or consciously accessed. The two stanzas are about the way that I feel this sort of electric reverberation of loss over some relationship experiences, and that it sometimes feels like a devastated landscape inside of myself. But I think if I had sat down to write that directly, instead of letting it just kind of fall into the framework of the syllable constraints, I would have sounded more like the emo kids from South Park (err, maybe I do anyway).