“The Road to Hell”

I am surrounded by blank pages.
With scorn, they mock my inability
to fill their gluttonous gullets.
Notebooks, journals, and diaries jeer
with disgust and desire; even the
looseleaf paper stares longingly
at the collection of pens and pencils
I have amassed, a stinging tribute
to my stayed hand. Each time the
moleskin is opened, he gasps,
hopeful, only to be crushed as I
jot a quick note, perhaps a phone
number, or a few names. The foreign
beauty with the hand-pressed paper
has not once been opened, and lusts
to be used — as a post-it, a sketchbook,
or kindling, she does not discriminate.
Each celebration of a birthday — be it
mine or Jesus Christ’s — is merely an
excuse for more lonely pages to join
the ranks, collecting dust and growing
feeble. A mysterious hand pain is
merely a convenient excuse, for the
truth is that I have never been a
consistent writer — not on paper, at
least. My fingers are suited to typing,
and the keyboard assuredly gloats
daily to the lonely paper of her
usefulness; Microsoft Word of the
multitude of poems, short stories,
essays, papers, musings, and
assorted writings he has fabricated.
Indeed, if the road to Hell is paved
with good intentions, then I shall
descend in a carriage of blank paper.