I haven’t puked in over nine years. Understandably, most people would consider me fortunate, as vomiting is not usually regarded as an enjoyable activity. However, I am often plagued with a far more devastating condition than the stomach flu. Food poisoning is a sunny afternoon in the park in comparison to the despicable curse I must too frequently bear. To the average person, this grave affliction is known as writer’s block.
For an accountant, writer’s block is simply an annoyance, a moment of frustration. But to a seasoned novelist or even an angst-ridden teenager, writer’s block is a crippling malady. The inability to record the day’s events in a biting poem or witty short story is equivalent to a goldfish’s inability to breathe out of water. Remove Mr. Guppy from his habitat and he’ll desperately flop around, vacantly blinking his slimy helpless eyes until the inevitable happens. You’ve removed his means of survival. Such is the development of writer’s block for a writer; his purpose is removed. But this poor and irritated victim cannot look forward to the solace of an eternal end to quiet his heart’s yearning, as creative congestion is not fatal however much it may seem so. The blocked writer must forever wait in limbo. Life becomes a meaningless pattern: eat, work, attempt to sleep. The elusive “right words” will keep him up at night. He’ll sweat in his sheets, taunted by the unreachable perfect stanza until finally, he will drift into restless, haunting dreams before waking again to the betrayal of his alarm clock.
It isn’t difficult to see why I would much rather spend an evening clutching the cold, porcelain rim of food poisoning than an hour in the debilitating clutches of imaginative constipation. I would gladly trade a kidney for the opportunity to have a few cute verses published in a greeting card. Unfortunately, there is no such bargain. As an oft infected school teacher must accept the reality of a nine-month-long cold, the blocked artist must too look forward to summer vacation, the all-too-brief reprieve from an ugly foe.
When rhetoric escapes the desperate writer, it is not unlike the rejection of a cherished lover. He reminisces on the bright days spent in the company of alliteration and allegory, the nights wrapped in the warmth of metaphor and metonymy. He curses himself for taking the loose pen for granted, and longs for its return, only to be teased by rare glimpses of his past love. Creativity returns just long enough to once again whet his appetite and remind him of his bondage to the page. What nightmare may claim to be more gut wrenching than the loss of one’s ability to act on his only passion? While most would scoff at the idea of exchanging physical health for little more than literary diarrhea, I would certainly leap at the chance, as this is a heartache I am much too familiar with. So the next time I find myself begging the afternoon’s lobster bisque to remain captive, I will take a moment to be thankful that I’m capable of spewing anything at all.

(June11-14, 2010)

A seafoam green chrysalis – this
place I’ve been allowed to grow.
Slices of light sticking
through the venetian slats –
illuminating contrast patterns
on the sofa – warming a
place for me to rest my
weariness. A concrete world
exists outside – twisted asphalt & steel,
bones & flesh, television & chlorine.
But now the embrace of hotel
bed sheets – the fresh sticky smell
of bakery – the comfortable
drowsiness of safety – before
there was porch swings and
learning to write and being
eleven years old.
This place that poets painted
before the foundations were poured -
This place that builds itself
backward. This place, my place –

November 19-26, 2009

The trumpet player tips his horn
to let a thirsty listener lie
in pools of E minor meloncholy.

Molasses from a place above drips
down and down, congealing
in the silver space between.

A siren song of suffering sounds
inside a bony cage – reverberates
where bolder notes have failed.

Gabriel smiles.

(February 3, 2009)

I

Second, I am a writer.
The ink in my veins doesn’t
die with passing moments-
only lays stagnant.
It waits for the well to come
swelling up, and flooding over-                                                                                                                         
it rests, stewing in a hidden place
and then the kettle hisses;
sharp streams of solid smoke-
steam vapor pouring forth from
cavernous rivers.                                                                                                                                                        Second, I am a writer.

II

Second I am a writer
because first, I am a child-
a child of something mysterious
but internal, eternal and warm.
I am a child of knowlege and
of something booming with greatness.
This I am first.

III

Finally, I am a lover.
Third, because the two before
are unshaken while love
is a fickle villain.
Finally, I am a lover-
I’ve reached for the stars and
kept them captive in ketchup bottles.
I’ve laughed when I should’ve been crying.
I’ve slept when I should’ve been running.
Third, I am a lover because
life is love and being loved-
“loving with a love that is more than love”
in this kingdom, you and me-
with all the stars that
can possibly be contained,
all the ink, all the tears, all the spitting
and dreaming and running-
all the stuff of love,
the gift of loving.
Third, I am a lover
because daffodils depend on
sunlight to thrive
and the pen depends on the writer
to write.

(December 11, 2008)

I never liked reading other poets
but for the dark ones-
I could suck my fingers
like a little kid
and lie in the dark
reading about bashed in brains
and cities in the sea
and I never wanted anyone to read me either
but when I finally let someone…
I didn’t write anything
for a long long time after that.
I sure didn’t let them read me anymore.
But I read you I’m reading you and
I can’t help but feel that I know you,
I don’t pretend to understand
what you wrote
but I love it-
the way I want to be read and loved.
Yours are delicate but powerful
while my hands are clumsy
and my pen is still weak.
Yours are dandelions
in a thistle patch world
and that’s not bad-
no one likes dandelions but me-
but I think they’re beautiful.

(June 29th 2009)

The mountains go by-
and farms and carcasses of cattle,
haystacks and forests-
all disappear behind starched
cotton curtains in a flash of light.
I’m aching from travel
and hurting worse knowing
that so many hours still
separate me from home-
from being clean, from real
sleep, ripe with dreams-
from gentle kisses on the scalp.
I haven’t been homesick
since I was seven. And
since I was nine I’ve been
adventure sick – itching to be
a Runaway baby – Queen of the stowaways.
I imagine myself now-
these strangers make good company
and dripping harvest for hungry pick-pockets.
Jeweled fists clasped around
the necks of cheap expensive wine-
easy targets for an innocent beggar-
but no. I am not a theif today-
I am a patron of the Burlington Northern
Santa Fe Railroad.
I am a passenger – a “valued customer”.
I am no runaway baby,
because it isn’t so bad
to have a home to ride home to.
And Mommy will be waiting with
kisses and new games.
And you will be waiting
with questions and arms-
and all the things I’ve been missing.
The mountains disappear and
the “Empire Builder” rocks me to sleep-
or what you call it when
your exhausted eyes slam shut
from 10 hours too many
on the railroad.

(August 14, 2009)

Hate sleeping with dog.
Smells like dead things-I do though
because I love you.

(August 8, 2009)

Companion to scrawny trouble-makers-
He makes trouble of his own
But cleans up very well
For an interview.

King of the soul siphoners-
He’s got secrets hidden in
Sandals that tell tales of the
Places he’s been.

Decendant of gun makers-
He shoots words like bullets,
Not the swiftest of weapons
But just as lethal.

(September 22-October 2, 2009)

I

Harpooned hovercraft of mangled
teenage heart hums
a tune, out of tune, crooked-
While the moan of a distant
motorcycle-god screams through
10 o’clock like insect wings.

II

Contemplated “godly-speech” confusion;
-shaken with one part Camel Lights,
one part black coffee,
two parts gravel- sends the delicate
machinery of the cyclist into a
cheese-grater skid, smearing face
and leather across pavement.

III

An awkwardness-
interrupted by starving moths
lost in a fog of
highway construction dust-
turns 315 into yellow
brick redemption.
My sailboat home on a river
of gasoline and the stale
over baked smell of city smog-
sweeps me up in the devastating
simplicity of loving one.
stupidly.

IV

Should haves try to resurrect
the dying, interrrupted by
parking meter checkers.
Time to pay up. Time is lost.

V

Dig deep to pick off
badges of significance.
“I am a queen!” vagrant woman shouts.
The bus leaves without
her- the coach leaves Cinderella
behind.

VI

Garage dreams return when
least expected-
Chain cranks to open panels
the inside lock is stuck again-
Spiders curling into
chemical heaps of extremities;
My stem breath on windows,
Door swings open.
Crowbar brain frothing
at the mouth with prose.
Skinny bow legs leave
the garage, leave tomorrow
hanging on the door.

Sunbath licks my skin like tub water-
I skim the surface of the sky and
watch a distorted horizon through
foggy reading glasses perched
on sunburnt nostrils.
Salt caked on milky white legs
scrapes off in sheets; the
gulls laugh at my awkwardness.

Usually careful not to overcook,
I do most of my writing behind
a window, watching from a
cushioned hiding place-
but usually the canvas before
me is still unmarked – whitewash
waiting desperately for imagination
in paint.

Today, cobalt is infused
in myrtle scented air. Magenta kisses
my cheeks and green reaches out
to embrace each traveler with
amnestic bliss.

Dreaming is reserved for daylight
and stars, like lonely nomads, wander
about the herds of cotton cloud life.