Thursday, July 6, 2017

WORKING ON MY NOVEL

Some days, I wake up
and feel like
the only thing I'm able
to write

is
my own name
italicized—

Dan Smart: sort of bent
and crumpled,

stretched thin and
maybe kind of subtly
yelling at everyone;

and I try to fix
the way it looks
with a few quick cups
of black coffee,

but each one only
makes the letters
look bolder

and then adds another
strenuous (though impressive)
punctuation mark to it.

If it hasn't grown
too long, it's still able
to walk the dog
and maybe exercise a little,

which seems to at least
drop it off
at the top
of a new paragraph;

but then, it's just stuck up there,
freaked-out by precarious
position it's in,
wondering how long

it can possibly
stay balanced
in any sort interesting
(read: readable) way

when it's reaching so
hard for what's clever
and hugging
what's miserable.

And would anyone
want to read that?

Then, I think—maybe
that's enough for today.
And

my name relaxes,
straightens out,
or at least
calms down enough

to be read
legibly again. And suddenly
it's like—except

for all the content,
this thing
writes itself.