Muse, did you heed the government's call
For social distancing, after all?
I wonder sometimes, why you're not there,
Whether some of my poems are just from your whisper
Over Skype? I sit waiting for you to come online.
Impatient, I call. A tone. 5 minutes. It's fine.
No answer. You answer me less than I answer the man
I should be writing for, though I give you all I can.
Muse, you have me, my mind, my hands,
Ready to serve you, make you great to my friends, to art, to all lands...
What's that? I hear your crackled, fizzled voice across the line,
Once dulcet, mellifluous, I can barely make it out. "Buy a mic!" "No, you put up the volume!" It's fine.
Except it's not. Love me, or hate me, you're mine
And we need to work together through this
Because ink is my, your, lifeblood, words, a lifekiss
You tell me I can't force words upon a page
And in my childish, petulant, repressedly silent, still sage, rage
I tell you "It's all that some of us have right now."
You sigh. I sigh. "Do you remember, Inspiration, remember, how
One enlightened fifteen-year-old said
"Genius is the ability to create
Something
Out of Nothing."?"