don't want to get my hopes up

[saw]

I used to write feverishly
like my life depended on it,
but words have since been banished
into lanquishment

it's a house without bars on the windows
or bolted doors nailed shut
it's the same old place I once created things,
now it's as tight-lipped as frozen clam

so what happened ?...........
how did the endless parade of ideas
come to its termination within the same walls
that spewed all those wordy combinations

I seem to be walking in circles
through the same rooms where things once grew
around I go, round and round...around,
wait a minute !..... I've been here before!

what will become of me ?
what will take its place, if anything at all,
what in the world will spark from these dying embers ?
oh, I don't know.....perhaps an unimagined phoenix will rise up ?

a poetic reincarnation,

but I don't want to get my hopes up

[sasha]

 
roger that...

unwritten masterpieces...
The Glory That Was Rome
(a sci-fi epic)
Graven Images
(a Lovecraftian tale [or is it 2, or 3?] )
Ghosts of Christmas Past
(a pseudo autobiography)...
whither have they gone?
scattered notes, false beginnings
grand ideas
still unrealized
and likely to remain so...
inspiration is only half the game
perspiration is the other
and that takes energy
a quantity I'm running low on
barely enough
to keep an old physics problem
simmering
(how far does a braking car travel
before coming to a stop?)...
mathematical legerdemain
once instinctive
now like threading a minefield
with painful care
lest I overlook a minus sign
or (worse)
divide by zero...
whenever I need a reminder
that I'm no longer young
I just open my old calculus text
and stare uncomprehendingly
at the mystic runes within

[saw]

your poem is like
a complimentary color of acrylic paint
just the right accent

[sasha]

sometimes
it takes two players
to sink a basket...

[saw]

that's true
so I officially credit you with
an assist