Poet’s Last Word

Oh, where in the world can your poet run
When the words fall flat, and the rhymes won’t come?
Oh, what hard trials arise to squash younglet poetry,
Like a weeded up, oak-wilt, unlovely and broken tree?
No thesaurus, no dictionary, nor dog-paged Bartlett’s
Can save a poor rhymester when the scansion he forgets.
Arched over his blank page, a pen rusting in his hand,
He remembers clever phrasing that once lofted grand.
But today, too many hours passed, when imagery faded away:
No paragraphs soar to shine, no dark truths for a heart to sway.
Just letters on a keyboard accompany the page gleaming white—
Is it old age, or a brain cancer, or Alzheimer’s that’s blanked his inner sight?
Swirling leaves, the pelting rain; no, just tears to wet another empty page.
Crashing thunder, volcanic explosions; no, just writer’s blocked impotent rage.
Was all this alleged talent just Life’s joke on the unwittingly absurd?
What do you say to the one who cannot find the poet’s last word?

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Friday The 13th Acadien

He ain’t user friendly
He prefers bottom shelf
You’ll never see it coming
He won’t much mind, himself
“Baby’s toys gracing the floor”
She asks if there’s gonna be another stanza—
“Baby breathless, asking for more”
He gets the glasses down from the credenza
He don’t care who won the game
He hates to mow the lawn
He’d like to return to Barcelona
But, well, he’s slightly overdrawn
“So, what are we up now, love?”
His muse has some quite juicy lines—
“Don’t worry, baby, we have the time.”
She has the all of everything for which he pines.
He writes the stuff after dark
He likes his second glass
The neighbors seem to cringe:
Pity, he really hasn’t much class
Remember, deeply, the seventies
When Zeppelin was all the rage?
(This rhymester’s saddest secret:
Why wasn’t he born Jimmy Page?)
He steals words from his muse:
“Carefully caressing every soft contour”
Anticipation sweet, removing those fancy shoes:
“Even her red toes, that he does adore”
He thinks he can dance
He’s torn it up with the best.
But here comes Friday the 13th
He won’t much mind this test.

–thanks for writing assist by June O!