I woke up this morning voiceless wordless
struck useless and dumb in the wee thin hours
hapless casualty of some goddamned
anti-muse that hauled its mythological
ass through the window my lover forgets
to close regularly and silently scooped
my forebrain free with a plastic melon-
baller all pale slick and trembling
unused to oxygen shrinking wretched afraid
of light poor prosencephalon little
word-cruncher spinning-wheel poem-
factory you were gonna make me
rich get me famous published invited
to the good parties with dark-eyed boys and tall
foreign girls you were gonna get me
laid before you got plucked
like a disobedient eye and popped into
some skinny hobgoblin’s mouth like
a midnight snack hard-boiled egg still
cold from the fridge now I’ve got this void
in my head this gap this great empty
space where I used to keep my metaphors
and motifs my anaphora and assonance my
irony and wit safe and warm tucked away so
much for that now pissed-off and aphasic my
life littered with the bare scaffolds of half-
done poems a clever line or two on a credit card
slip scansion marks scratched on torn
notebook sheets a really good simile on the back
of my bus pass every fucking word of it
worthless echoing in the impotent vacancy behind
my eyes every nerve in my body tweaked and
when I sleep I dream only of blank pages