Several months ago, I attempted to submit 6 poems to the New Yorker. March was allegedly the month that they would contact me IF they were interested in my work...

...I never heard back, sadly.

So I figure, what the hell, let's share the six pieces I was planning on sharing with the literati-minded strata, shall we?

This is a piece for all of those writers who claim to suffer from some imaginary blockage that I DO NOT believe in--it's kind of like Kevin Smith said, "I suffer more from writer's laze..."

Enjoy!

Everyone Else Calls It 'Writer’s Block'

I can hear myself moan with a fullness,
a gale of an out of body experience—
this lack of craftsmanship, trite excuses,

a laze in my association cortex; the sight
and smell of white freshness creates the desire
to chew my fingers’ skin nearly to the edge

of the bleed. I laugh and I think about all
the times I would take a lover at nearly
any time, from any direction, brushing them

lightly with my pen; and now, I am acute;
precise and aware of this itching, an impotence
like the meat of the definition of “an absence”,

so much so that my coloration recedes out
of my toes, onto the floor, and I become
the same old story, sounding like a repeater.

I’m amused—because all the good muses
are tied to ship masts in craggy bottomed
oceans; I could buy a bottle of green

Van Gogh go-juice but all the little faeries
and dragons would flit into fits of epilepsy
when they got to know me—they’d drink too.

Boy meets poetry; boy has escapade with
poetry; boy leaves poetry; boy finds poetry
again; poetry doesn’t love the boy anymore...

© 2008 Steve Ekstrom