NaWUPoBo, #26
Only two days left in NaWuPoBo! I hope all is well with you. Will you share your 28 poems with me when you are done?
I just gave a poetry reading helping to promote 4 Against the Wall, which1 did not go off as well as I hoped for. I guess you can't be "on" all the time. Shame I have so much of my identity bound up in this role of "poet." I think that is why Writer's Block is such a cruel idea. What else in our hollow lives do we have to fall back on when the gift of performance leaves us? True, this soup metaphor I used in this sonnet doesn't seem as curious as I first thought it was when I started writing. But, on the other hand, I like soup. Onion soup and cheese? Mmmmm ….
What do we do when the hoodoo leaves us?
All these poky gifts the gods grant dry up?
the voice cracks; the long, tenacious service
ends? Let the beet sing the blues, the turnip
wail, the tomato moan. I want this bowl
of soup to suffer. Each ingredient
is pure, itself. So why do you console
me for a bad performance? I have spent
sweat for this hour; am I not like the beet?
turnip? tomato? Am I not a part
of a whole, somewhere? Do I not complete
something, somehow? Or is my pungent art
failing? I'll be a bowl of soup, onion
and chives. Gruff like failure, tart like urine.
- And I get this information from very reliable sources [back]