The Races

My vocabulary
starch stiff as a board,
fluidly flat,
like a pancake without syrup,
ran out of words
here.

And then here too.

But then picked up with momentum
like a race horse at the very end of a race.
Jockey poking and proding and beating it to death
Ticket holders roaring with their five to ten odds
Move your bloody ass poem, move it for daddy

And then a pause of self reflection.

Withering down my will to keep things together,
or on the page,
or even the subject matter,
which I haven't come to yet
but will soon.

Like now -

Another blank -

I have an idea,
twirling inside me
like a ballerina in Swan Lake
or a bee inside of a soda bottle licking the sweet sugar
watching the people he could be stinging from inside the glass,
but I'm afraid.

I falter, I fail.

I lie awake at night beating the race horse.


...February 2003