Ink blots and hasty misspellings
Crosses against untidy writing
Angry slashes on the stamps
Too many smudged words
A publisher’s worst dream
As he tears open the envelope
Slowly reads the smudged words
Trying to make some sort of sense
Ah.
You’ll have to forgive us poets
We have quite a busy schedule too
We spend days and nights on end
Editing our poetry again and
Again
Then when we are finally done
The coffee stains the white paper
The words melt slowly in caffeine
And all the hard work disappears
Even if we write another poem
And baby-sit the paper so well
It drops into a muddy puddle
Or gets blown in the wind
Now the taxes are too high
The rents are climbing up
We try our best to meet deadlines
And dodge from the rain and wind
So before you throw that poem away
Remember it’s been lucky to survive
I hope you’ll mutter a quick prayer
For every poet who’s on your list!
A contest entry
- In the company of. . . by Annalise.
900 points, ended July 18, 2007, 9 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
-
Isn't this the truth? I know many times I've culled and culled a poem until all I've left is some faint fossil of what I started out with. If I keep that up... my writing will be exinct (which sometimes isn't a bad thing).
You've brought to the table what most of us feel sending out submissions to the many (un-named) editors.
"The words melt slowly in caffeine" yeah! Love that line.
Adding your comment:
