Blocked

Today, the lead in my pencil had run dry;

it did not want to yield up any words.

This isn’t true, strictly speaking,

because here I am, seated at a table,

pencil in hand, words slowly filling up the page.

But I feel as though I’m torturing the lines into existence,

and torture, as we all know, doesn’t yield any truth,

but simply tells us what we want to hear,

until you end up with a meaningless confession.

Blocked, the title which I’ve just written ironically proclaims.

I’m playing hide and seek with words and meaning.

I’ve counted up to twenty, called,

‘Come out, come out wherever you are!’

and left it at that. I’m in no mood for searching, though.

Instead, I’m writing stream of consciousness stuff.

Unconsciousness, perhaps.

Maybe the words have been knocked out from all the torture.

They’re lying hidden, somewhere: beaten, bloodied, incapable of surfacing.

This isn’t poetry, it’s something else:

desperation, or maybe laziness.

No metre, structure, sense of direction,

just blah, blah, blah and a bit more blah.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

That’s it; that’s all I’ve got to say:

an unintended metaphor for poetry today.