Smidgies
Just a bit of fluff.
A rough
pen & ink sketch
when it was a ketch
we came to paint,
but it sailed
leaving us paled and faint
like “Ten Little Indians“
with no way out
and nobody in.
A mystery, no history
of death, no breath,
not even a sigh,
just a cold lie
and a murderous sin.
We try to survive
Yet, lack any color
but green dollar,
white collar blues,
and black.
The sell caller:
Ring tone to the bone,
yakkety-yak,
day and night, (9-9 E.S.T.).
Can’t we see
those ten, frightened, little Indians
with no way out
and that sailor on the ketch,
overboard, up to his ass
in foreign grass,
sailing fast
past jurisdiction
to open seas,
while we
pen an outline
redefine our mood
to some dude
online,
whose food for thought
is caught
halfway between
half-baked ideas
and half-assed articulation?
Tasteless tidbits of fluff
that linger,
but not long enough
to finger-paint the town
in any color
except re-read and re-written.
Smitten with words,
crippled by ideas
that won’t let go
forced to stare
at the screen-glow,
the great protector of privacy,
now a sea of piracy
spamming and phishing
for fools who drool
on their own words
and drown in spittle
from too little
imagination
or too much procrastination,
while their ship sails
and they’re left to bail
or watch their pier collapse
from a lapse of craft.
Sink or swim to the Isle of Muses!
Useless bitches in britches
with no inspiration,
no alliteration,
just assonance,
feline, defined, behind, etc.
Heterosexual
love, lust, and longing etc.
Lingering, fingering,
hindering expression,
a lesson
in jingoism:
Bingo! It’s them!
Raison d’être!
Raison d’ecrire!
A spent pen
that came too soon,
before the inspiration,
and swooned
in the heat of the passion,
leaving nothing on the sheet
but incomplete
thoughts and a bit of fluff.
Not nearly enough!