I've suffered in the throes
of writer's block for seven sordid days
I've spent the wordless week wandering in a silent daze
I tried to pick the lock to lift the fog and haze
But the words were stacked against me backed into their dark caves
They never left me entirely they were cold and huddled together
in the sticky-damp attic of my mind mumbling themselves chanting in time
I thought the ***** would loosen their fearful grip on reality
but the words proved to be a stubborn people
singing We Shall Overcome while hovering
behind my whiskey-drenched eyes
I tried jumping up and down up and down
nightly to rattle one word loose
Just a lonely word a sick child of a word
the one with the least hand strength and the most fierce imagination
but even this word proved thick with endurance
vitality perserverance and clung tightly to his handholds
Any attempt to moisten my palate with the
smooth syrupy texture of a word
was met with bitter reluctance by my parasitic tongue
as if a mountain man were holding a red-hot iron
inches away from my bread hole
There they clung with surpirising tenacity
on the steep cliffs of my inner skull
Some of them proved hungry to be spoken
but the sacred few I managed to twist into an
audible figurine balloon were useless and elastic
Words like **** and **** were flowing like ichorous
from the aperture in the front of my face
They dangled and then I broke free.