If you would create something,
you must be something.

The poet sits at his desk, his head empty of stories,
the inkwell running dry and the quill motionless.
He used to write about heroes on deadly quests,
rescuing stranded maidens from castles and forests,
always slaying a dragon or two along the way,
but heroes are surprisingly hard to come by these days.
He must adapt to the shifting paradigms in his culture,
all the heroic stories have been lapped up and forgotten,
now people demand some originality in their reading.

He scratches his head and muses on a dream he had,
an actor in a play suddenly consumed by stage fright,
freezes mid-performance as the crowd grows confused.
The audience mutter amongst themselves if this is part of the performance
but those who have been before assure them this is something new.
The actor is covered in flop sweat and his mouth quivers,
anticipating his next line but time is escaping him.
As audience members begin to stand up and shout at the actor,
the memory of the dream fades away and the story goes unfinished.

The poet slams his hand on his desk, knocking the quill to the floor.
He slams his hand down again and the blank piece of paper
sticks to his hand and he cannot shake the thing off.
A moth flies in through the window and attacks the candle flame,
burning its wings and shedding its dust upon his desk.
He thinks maybe he should write about this evening,
the lack of inspiration and a fight with a leaf of paper,
but no one wants to hear a story about that,
the readers demand action and intrigue and mystery,
all of which is lacking for this poet at his desk.

Men’s best successes
come after their disappointments.