A Struggling Poet

they're not speaking to me now, the Muses; they're being stubborn, witholding information, like beetle-browed accomplices - their mouths pulled tight as drawstring purses. they sit on their twin thrones of epiphany and genius, smiling silently, mockingly, while my fingers twitch with impotent yearning and the chambers of my mind are cold, dark and hollow as a cave. i have become a contradiction in terms - the wordless poet strikes again... writer's block is the yoke around my neck, the anchor that sends me drifting lachrymose into the suffocating depths - i am drowning, swallowing tendrils of seaweed and tufts of gossamer melancholy. a struggling artist shouldn't have to work this hard - to pay the bills yes, but not to create; without the birthing process there is no artist... yet there is still hope, a smidgen, a dark smudge on the horizon. some knight errant might appear, with golden locks and a smile that trembles the knees, to inject love and longing back into my sulky heart. he might extend his brave hand, down into these murky depths, and yank me up; dragging my creativity, bedraggled, choking, retching, into the bleak light of inspiration's flare... but then again, who believes in knights these days? i am just as likely to wither away down here, among the fishes and the wall-eyed anemones, until the words have all filtered from my brain and poetry is just a fond memory from long-ago halcyon days...