Help Wanted

Sometimes the only poet around

Is a dog barking at the moon. 

It's eleven p.m., time to dismantle the silence 

And dash off a stanza or two 

For my Friday morning’s writers' group 

But each time I beg my little red schoolhouse 

For a rhyme 

It erases the blackboard and slams the door.

Soaked in midnight's pitch an hour later 

The inside of my head is sticky black 

As I contemplate white canes 

And seeing-eye dogs,

Miners' canaries, rusty scalpels, 

Shooting galleries, gutted limousines 

And fighting cocks, but all I've got 

Is a sheet of notebook paper squeaky clean 

Except for all of those empty blue lines 

Which remind me of prison bars 

And the birdlike shadow of my bony knuckles 

Perched on a ballpoint pen.

Whenever I play games with myself 

It's always my move 

So I spend the next half-hour 

Chasing ghosts around the room. 

Prefer the Japanese technique of catching them 

With chopsticks instead of nets

But hate their high-pitched squeal 

Each time I pluck one out of the air. 

When I finally go to bed I feel like a dead man 

In a silent movie who is having a difficult time 

Learning his lines. Then fall asleep 

And dream l've turned into a falcon 

Tethered to the devil's wrist. 

Wake up and wonder 

What I'll do when Lucifer removes my little hood. 

Bring down butterflies or baby birds?

Never go to bed before dawn, 

I tell myself as I pop a pill 

Because there are so many crutches 

But never an artificial leg to stand on 

At the end of a dead-end morning.