Alchemisland

I am cursed to write over and over the same poem

Once-vivid stanzas, now limpid and self-insistent

Verbs ham-fisted, butchers stuffing apples into pigs

Overloved bard’s heart’s overlord demanding again the same ode

Had we more Homer we would see a shared curse, perhaps worse

They had seen it once, they had seen it a million times

They chided him, gently ribbing, gem has lost its shine

To be reviewed scathingly I must first be reviewed

Let alone published

They love reading, send some

Tennis-chatter sudden abscond’d

Looking upon my poems as they would a scabied dog

Rabid frothing about their halls

Or as a devout Christian looks upon a snakewrap’d pome

Which caused mankind’s fall.