A Conversation With a Blank Page (For The Young Poet)

Don’t look so damned smug, the lamp shining on you putting you in the spotlight, reminding me that without you I’m nothing, a full teakettle that can’t whistle, a photograph undeveloped and unseen, chords without lyrics. We were so good together when we worked as one, my thoughts flowing into you, transforming your whiteness like a transfusion of blood brings color to the pallid face of a dying man, but once again my mind is as blank as the tabula rasa you are. There’s nothing to fill you up so you’re lying there haunting me taunting me, and all I can think to do with you, Mister Clean Slate, is fall upon you, crumple you in my shaking fist and cast you into the fire, where turning to ash you will of course glow, and I’ll be left alone with my writer’s block.