When Bedtime Comes and Goes



I stare at a blank page,
Bereft of a single stroke of
Lucid or incoherent thought.

I start to type words about
The events of my day,
Then erase them
When I realize that
My muse wasn’t talking about that.

My bedtime has come and gone;
I see that my pillows
Started without me,
So I sit and try to think of
Something profound,
Expressions to shake the world with
To be satisfied with the notion
I did a useful thing.

Nothing comes to mind,
And in my sleepy stupor,
I wouldn’t recognize it if I did,
But I’m straddling the line
Between awake and asleep
Because I refuse to believe in
Writer’s Block.

I wonder if this
Is what other poets do:
Drive themselves to exhaustion
To prove a literary point?
Or is it to keep a tenuous handle
On whatever passes for sanity?
Maybe that’s not an “or” question.

I stare at this page and ask my muse,
“What are you talking about tonight?”
It dawns on me during the silence that
I’m the only one speaking right now.

Imagine that…

© 2007 by Robert E. Blackwell