*The Writer*

So many things to say, all words become sludge within the mind.

Words become pliable in his hands, to be bent and broken at his will.

How many bright sunny days have been ignored in favor 

of a dark study with dusty thoughts and scratchted out words

He forsakes the world beyond for a piece of life upon the page,

for a moment when the story is illuminated by something divine.

Unfinished works moan and shriek from his desk drawer,

yearning to be finished, to be sparked into life by inspiration

but he does not touch them - he cannot bear to see his failings.

For to him, they are silent jeers and jaunts of how he cannot see it through

how he cannot find the ending, how he cannot harness his words.

Ah, and the words.

Nimble agile words, dancing before his eyes,

clamoring to be used, to be wrought into structure,

to be fashioned into a bouquet of sound and feeling.

Longing, how do I color the paper with your deep blue?

Love, how can I drape your crimson roses across the page?

So many thoughts, competing for attention.

Can he find rhyme and reason to this jumble?

He shudders with the weight of unborn stories upon his shoulders

and picks up his pen, trembling, begins to write.