“Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?” – Kurt Vonnegut
* * *
Hello blank canvas,
Long time no speak,
Other than last week,
Or the week that came before this.
Say hello,
To the the aching, quaking winter months;
Where the only pencils are lead-less,
The leaders are tactless,
The bed boards are backless; still we bend backwards.
And I’ll be your tour guide,
I know plenty about blank canvases,
Galleries, hoping for a shot at redemption,
Utilizing ones suspension
Of disbelief,
To ignore the block the artist faces,
When ducking under the fences.
Have you ever made your way around these halls?
Where empty walls drip; a few years far from a good coat of paint;
Haphazardly accepting their fate, and so are we.
Choice-less, we select blank, and blank again,
Ink-less, once again.
Finally you ask yourself,
Is that it? All that you can muster is a little poem about,
Feeling lost for words,
Feeling dry and wordless,
As if someone real and unfathomable,
Is off in a cave somewhere,
Holding all the words captive.
So you show up,
You knock rapidly,
Rapacious, starving,
We hold up our empty signs,
And ask for the words back,
Politely, of course,
We ask this.
Have you ever opened,
Blank document after blank document after blank document,
Only to leave them sitting open on the home screen?
Microsoft Document 1,
Two,
And 3.
Adopted children, converted and forgotten,
Untitled, untouched, unfulfilled — still you block them.
“Would you like to save changes?”
Not really, I reply when prompted,
I deny my options, when stopped,
Before ex-ing out,
I think,
This is why people choose not to look back.
Do you feel this way too?
Are you also filling your garage up with ivory canvases?
Hand-crafted emptiness,
Books about writing,
Isn’t it obvious?
This won’t be a quick fix,
For we didn’t choose this…
Hello blank canvas,
Long time no speak,
Other than last week,
Or the week that came before this.
