POETIC POVERTY

Poetic Poverty

Lying on my bed,
I see that there’s a new crack in the ceiling
That wasn’t there last night
There’s a decade old cobweb
With mummified remains
That looks like the man
From the old movie, The Fly,
Caught in a web begging for help
With his scared little mouth
In a perfect round O.

Hmmm. Let’s see
Oh, yes, on the left side of the bed
There’s the wall where my official certificate hung
Before it was confiscated by The Official Poetry Club
Because I hadn’t written anything in almost four days
And that violates stipulations of the membership contract
In the famed school of the unpaid
Poets of mail order prose
Plus, I hadn’t paid dues or bought any books
And was therefore, no longer
Officially, a poet.

Turning my head now to the right,
I peruse the blank square, picture-frame shaped,
Faded from sunlight on the drab empty beige,
That the portrait of my proud Muse once occupied,
Where the love of my life once happily lived,
And where all my hopes and wishes existed
In the warm admiration of her gentle eyes
It is blank
And I am blank
And the world is blank
So the page is blank
And all my ink has dried up in the well.

It’s almost like living
Without blood in my veins
Almost like having no heart
In my chest
I am the Tin Man
With hollow exterior
And nothing inside but a lonely echo
(hello….hello…..hello……)
My mind is a wasteland
With no words moving across it,
No tumbleweeds of angst,
Or clever repartee’
With a wit now so dry
It has died in the drought.

This is poetic poverty, this is
No Hallmark card verse, no obituary stuff
Made up out of guilt to hide the sad fact
That the dearly departed had not been properly loved
Until death’s hand has removed them
Beyond the reach of rejection
This is not limerick,
Or haiku, or prose
Hymn, lyric, ode
Sonnet, or symphony
Written on the gray cells
Of a composer’s vast brain.

This is inability to think or to feel
My gift has deserted me and left me to mourn
To crawl wounded alone into a dark closet
Howling amongst sweatshirts and faded blue jeans
That I still hang onto, believing one day,
They’ll fit me again and you’ll want me back
And I’ll be young and handsome and gifted enough
To write a great classic, some urban masterpiece
Or a radio jingle or at the very least,
My number on a matchbook that will go round the world
And find itself clutched in your hand some fine day.

I once was a rich man
And the king of the world
And poetry flowed from me so much
I drowned us both in the sea of my words
But you loved it and you loved me
You loved my verse
And the hustle and flow
Of new-age Shakespeare
Rising deep from my soul
Up to my mouth to your eager ears
Who could not wait to hear what it might say.

But that was before,
Before the drought came,
Before the ocean dried to stream,
And then to trickle,
And then to drop
Before the words no longer came
And they took the world away
Poetic poverty
Empty libraries,
Unwritten songs,
Starving sonnets
Begging on the streets for bread
Because I can no longer write them.

All the pages are empty now
Even potential titles
Have faded away to ghostly script
And piled up in the corners with the dust
I cannot write
I cannot spell
I cannot rhyme
I lie here on this un-made bed
With my hands behind my head
And I can’t remember a single thing I ever wrote
Except for my name in Junior High
Entwined with yours on the back of that tree.

Give me back my words
Give me back my words
I am lost without them
I am wandering in a world without a song
A man without a Muse,
A Tin Man without a heart,
A millionaire, without a dime to his name
And nothing to show
For a life full of rhyme
Not even a blog
On the damn internet.

Poetic poverty, this
Empty archives, empty arms
Dry, parched throat
With no champagne
Hovering ‘neath newspaper
To keep out of the cold
A homeless poet, bereft of poem
Looking for an addict’s fix
To make him write again
Looking for the muse and reader
That took the words away
Longing for the only one
That can make things rhyme again.

©by Voo
May 21, 2011
9:33 p.m.
Thank  you to my Muse………………♥
Ironic, isn't it??