(no subject)
to be a writer is to live as a scribe;
trying so hard to be that best-selling novelist
but coming in third in an online poetry contest
you strive to conceive any unique thought,
any eloquently stringed piece of music
to yield a raging demand for an encore
but,
with feet stuck in humdrum sludge,
you can only give birth to bread-and-butter--
childish imperfect phrases
about the panic of love
and the horror of life
loss, change:
the bypassing of friends who knew you when
you were at your worst and when
you really believed you were at your best
(But you played that role well,
as both Brutus and Judas)
and
the girl who can't make up her mind
has pillaged your soul and
looted your veins of their pulse
it's now when it's obvious:
fifty years will come and go,
a commune of wrinkles to add to your aged face
and a damaged liver to expel poison
into a barely-breathing corpse
who hasn't seen Egypt or spent a summer in Europe,
but has obtained blisters from filling out
insurance forms, tax reports, last will and testaments.
Never signing birthday cards to grandkids
or writing letters to old companions,
there is no ring on those tired worn hands
(You've never eaten white cake
from your true love's fingers)
and looking back,
it's always been threadbare;
you've always given your verses the utmost attention,
giving nothing to the present until it
slaps you down a notch--
arrogance can feed the most self-pitying scapegoats
you've wasted your days overacting,
laboring away, relentless
destined to beat what is trite.
all the while you're just praying for a prosaic epiphany
or a knife:
follow through with what is splashed on paper;
use no fancy metaphors, they get in the way.
Cut straight to the point,
grab onto that dagger tightly
and feel relief as mortality is punctured.
Malignent or with the possibility of hope,
copyright or free-to-rephrase,
writing is pain
and all these hackneyed lines won't matter.
trying so hard to be that best-selling novelist
but coming in third in an online poetry contest
you strive to conceive any unique thought,
any eloquently stringed piece of music
to yield a raging demand for an encore
but,
with feet stuck in humdrum sludge,
you can only give birth to bread-and-butter--
childish imperfect phrases
about the panic of love
and the horror of life
loss, change:
the bypassing of friends who knew you when
you were at your worst and when
you really believed you were at your best
(But you played that role well,
as both Brutus and Judas)
and
the girl who can't make up her mind
has pillaged your soul and
looted your veins of their pulse
it's now when it's obvious:
fifty years will come and go,
a commune of wrinkles to add to your aged face
and a damaged liver to expel poison
into a barely-breathing corpse
who hasn't seen Egypt or spent a summer in Europe,
but has obtained blisters from filling out
insurance forms, tax reports, last will and testaments.
Never signing birthday cards to grandkids
or writing letters to old companions,
there is no ring on those tired worn hands
(You've never eaten white cake
from your true love's fingers)
and looking back,
it's always been threadbare;
you've always given your verses the utmost attention,
giving nothing to the present until it
slaps you down a notch--
arrogance can feed the most self-pitying scapegoats
you've wasted your days overacting,
laboring away, relentless
destined to beat what is trite.
all the while you're just praying for a prosaic epiphany
or a knife:
follow through with what is splashed on paper;
use no fancy metaphors, they get in the way.
Cut straight to the point,
grab onto that dagger tightly
and feel relief as mortality is punctured.
Malignent or with the possibility of hope,
copyright or free-to-rephrase,
writing is pain
and all these hackneyed lines won't matter.