My Personal Demon

The road opens out before me, full of promise, rapturous day. Words hang like ripened plums, couplets flower in gaudy array. Transitive and irregular verbs scatter about my feet. Rhymes and rhythms fill my head, I smile to all that I meet. The muse is on me and nothing impedes the transient flow of words. The cadence flows my thoughts take flight, I'm up there with the birds. Then, as the first stanza ends, there he sits, smirking and shaking his head. The doubt creeps in, then, cardinal sin, I quickly start losing my thread. My personal demon sits on my shoulder and cackles into my ear. "Call that a rhyme? You're wasting your time writing stuff that no one will hear. Don't be a jerk, stop what you're doing, go walking or fishing instead. Anything's better than writing down this foolishness inside your head." And so I concede and let my words bleed and haemorrhage off the page. Once more I give in and consign to the bin, frustrated and consumed with rage. I vow there and then never to pen another insight into my soul. But the words start to flow and before I know, I'm once again on a roll. The demon's still there, sat in his chair just waiting with vitriolic glee. But I kill him stone dead by posting my thread thus defeating the demon in me.