Food in the Spiderweb (or, Tuesday)

Poetry (with Audio!)

My darling, my dear,
I’d like to pluck the eyes from your skull and swap them with mine,
just in case there’s something new to see. 
It’s Tuesday,
and I haven’t written more than thirty words on the matter,
so today I’ll try 
to weave my web
and catch the fattest fly

Lukewarm coffee. Too-hot tea. Curled paper trimmings like
the dead skins of snakes
littering my busy desk, covering my busywork,
making it hard to focus on 
my busywords, or anything else in front of me.
When’s the last time I wrote a poem in which I meant what I said? 
When’s the last time I wrote a story that I cared for? 
Who’s that, standing just beyond the windowpane?
How did I get this hole get in my head?

I want to look at you from a new perspective, 
one that may forgo
the want to bludgeon you to bits 
with some big, blunt object, or the need to
write down your wretched name, the need to spell it wrong, 
the need consequently cross it out, all while skipping cracks in the sidewalk, 
singing those kid-songs to myself,
kicking rocks down the alleyway,
crossing fingers when telling a joke

but instead I’m left to carve it out with his fountain pen
and pretend my brain isn’t
rattling ‘round my skull like
some lackluster prize in the gumball machine
with drumming fingers and thrumming heart–

I fear my metaphors may be escaping me. I fear I’m losing the room.

Brian Wilson’s dead tomorrow. 
But me? I’m feelin’ just fine.

Tuesday, again, with writer’s block the size of a city square.
Shake your fists at it, baby. Nobody’s coming
to save you from you.