Poetic Gymnastics

#16/30

I am doing poetic gymnastics tonight:

Inverting, reverting, imitating

Writing backwards, writing across, using

Fake translations, getting drunk: nothing

Is coming out. I am poetically constipated.

Somewhere in me there has to be some poem.

I am made of poems. I have, however,

Extracted every flowery synonym that was close

Enough to the surface to be easy and now,

I suppose, I’ll have to do some real work

To find the next layer of authentic expression.

I think I’ve always known this: that one cannot

Dredge poems from one’s fingers with a little

Bit of exercise. A poem requires a lifestyle

Of heart opening observation and wrenching

Self-reflection, bleeding onto paper.

Tonight, I am too depleted to write a poem.