Obstruction

Tell me, doctor, what to do

for blockage in the tubes

that nourish and remove waste

from the gut-loop

that creates and excretes

poetry.

There’s something wrong this week:

I write no rhymes:

all that I scribble is captive

to the laws of prose.

Has an important digestive enzyme

gone missing?

Or is this a case of literary gall-stones

at pains to stop the flow of bile?

(How can you write poetry without bile?)

Or appendicitis?

(I meant no offence with the parenthetic ode,

or the semi-colon.)

Google-Doc suggests a dose of Joyce

or tincture of Eliot. But you’re the expert

so tell me what to try. 

Maybe IV enthusiasm:

the Royal Wedding has drained me

(especially the sermon) so fluids? Yes, OK.

But what’s that you say?

“More sleep.” 

I waste so much time on sleep –

and then there are the dreams.

You are a hopeless romantic to suggest that

“Poems are made of such things.”