Scarecrow

The author, who knows age is now his enemy, is praised and beloved, but few buy his books beyond academic insiders.  Magazines clamor for his short fiction, awards migrate to his doorstep with embarrassment, but he goes on living in his small house, wrapped in preferred obscurity, trapped behind a keyboard, searching for stories and trying to write a lesson plan for next week.  He teaches creative writing at a liberal arts college where creative thought supposedly matters, walking the halls and hearing whispers of students who gesture at him and want to be writers, hardly a talent among them, writing stories they think he wants to read, that he'll point to in class and say, "Finally, this is what I'm talking about," so he keeps searching for that lone fresh voice that will make it all worthwhile and prevent ideas from bleeding out.  Sometimes their stories bring him ideas but he resists them because that might be stealing and carry accusations of plagiarism or lacking originality, he, the revered tale teller, washed up, resorting to leaching off his students who, while writing contrived false stories for him, fail to flirt with him anymore.  On weekends he creates his own world with small black marks most misinterpret as modern.  He knows he is trying too hard, lost his patience, no longer able to write full-plotted novels that demand reader commitment. He can only pen short prose, easily digestible stories he can knock out, sell quickly and move on to another, ignoring the letters of rabid fans who plea for another fat tome. School and age and routine have taken that out of him now, forcing him into literary acrobatics that somehow don't seem as true or honest as the skinny hairless spectacled scarecrow he sees when walking past a mirror. Maybe there's a story in there somewhere.

© Poem Fix http://www.poemfix.com 2012

Lonely Sailor

Someone said
A writer writes because he has
No choice.
That it's like breathing,
An involuntary response to
Holding a freshly sharpened pencil
Or sitting at a keyboard,
A disease.
Writers peck at immortality
Recognition
Flirt with fame
But mostly must be focused on
The next elusive paycheck
From teaching or milking cows.
They write because it's what they do,
Hoping to corral large inspiration to convey small truths,
At best.
Writers yearn for a single gentle reader
Who will say she understands
Even if she doesn't.
Oh, poet,
Lonely sailor,
Lusting for a wind gust
Or a pod of dolphins to show the way.

© Poem Fix http://www.poemfix.com 2012
Photo: anoldent

How to Start a Story

In the beginning
Are words that work well to
Start things off.
Nothing can come before that
Unless you listen to Vonnegut and
Start as close to the end as possible.
This moves things forward,
Keeps us interested,
Dispenses with preamble and
Planet building.
If we're not interested in
Heaven and earth,
Don't care what my name is,
Want to dispense with that
David Copperfield kind of crap,
Then we turn deep into the story
Where our protagonist is in trouble and
Looking for epiphany.
Because,
In the beginning,
He chose poorly,
Setting in motion a contrived plot
Where no one rests or uses the bathroom,
Where people aren't as real on the page
As they are arguing over a purchase at the dollar store down the block
Or suffering from an unfair tumor,
Because by design and perhaps by definition
Life is not fair.
That's the real beginning we deserve
But not the one we get.

© Poem Fix http://www.poemfix.com 2012
Photo: Wien Sommeregger