The Benson Basement

Writing is like having a tooth pulled
        with a fishing line
but instead of right there in my mouth,
the tooth is somewhere in my chest
and it’s gotta come all the way up and out
and I guess it’s not really a tooth anyway.

The Muse casts into my mouth
and the hook slides down my throat.
She grins and winks, and pulls up the hood on her poncho.

Smog swirls in my heart
and the hook dips deep in the depths
and I feel it teasing unexpected selves down there -
unexpected, yet familiar.

The Muse yanks, and on its way out the hook scrapes
and I bleed bad writing.
I cough it up, horrified.
And then I take a little jar
and frantically collect it all
- like candy from a piñata -
because I know it’s my blood.

Tags: ENG 255, poetry

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 11th, 2008 at 2:19 am and is filed under Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.