Speaking of the poetry bug...

[streetbirds]

I have reached the startling conclusion

that my Muse is either a man or a lesbian

because nothing seems to excite him (her?)

more than the sight of my naked flesh:

wet, covered in citrus-scented soap,

and in the shower.

That’s the cause for complaint right there.

All of my best ideas come to me in the shower!

There I am: leg balanced on

Comments

[andyleggett]

Rough around the edges, but a good idea, not badly deployed. I think reading Elizabeth Bishop might help you; for some reason your subject and tone seem one step off from her.

For the last line of the first stanza and 'BAM!', I'd get rid of the exclamation point, as it's a little much. I'd streamline the rougher, more sloppy parts into a more controlled whole, thematically speaking.

This has the potential to be a really *great* poem, if your verse is given a little more finesse... I'm not sure I'm being clear...

[word_of_moth]

In general this is a bit too prosaic - what makes a poem different from a paragraph with line breaks? Precision & economy of phrase.

Some images I love:
- "but the paper fractures. /It swells and folds and rips apart /earthquake style" (although I feel like "earthquake style" would be better as "like an earthquake," that's just me)... although the image of "glittering" jars with me, paper wouldn't do that. It would be see-through and limp, not crackly and shiny.
- pen as "giant sea slug"
- "where I use a carving knife to scratch a few lines /into the wood of the kitchen table. /The table does not mind"

Some I don't like/which are cliche:
- "citrus-scented soap" I can't even voice why this bothers me, but I guess it goes back to being too prosaic.
- "Bam!" Only Emeril can say this properly.
- "Inspiration strikes me like a Spanish bull" ugh. ack. glag.
- "like a poetical grocery list"

[novapsyche]

There's a lot of good raw material here but, as word_of_moth says, it's too prosaic at this point. For example, "The kiwis and booze are to sustain me" could be simply "The kiwis and booze sustain me".

Personally, my suspension of disbelief is strained when the speaker says her skull is cracked but does not call for help. It's one thing to split open the top of one's head, but the skull itself? And there are brains? And the cashier at the store didn't say anything? It's not quite believable. (Which isn't to say that poems can't say things that aren't based in reality, but the speaker needs to seem authentic [that is, earn the reader's trust] and what is presented needs to feel plausible.)

Good luck with the revision.

[mspixieears]

This actually reads more like prose than poetry to me, it's only towards the end that it starts to feel more like a poem. It could be like prose because a lot of the lines are very long?