The Writings Of A Frustrated Poet Poem by Michael Troy Buffo

(Another of my earliest works)

The longest poem without inspiration
Is like a laborer without persperation
You can't have a baby without a mother
You can't have one without the other
When you're in trouble, when you're in pain
And you you've lost all hope of personal gain
Do you look to cry on somebody's shoulder,
Or say it'll get better as you get older?
Do you get worried when something goes wrong,
Or sit down, like I do, and write a short song?
The words to unwritten lyrics often eat at my brain
(Sometimes I wonder if I'm not truly insane)
I'll sit there for hours, with pencil in hand
Thinking quite hard with no words to command
Slowly but surely, they'll come out in time,
And if i'm lucky some words might even rhyme.
I'll proof-read it once, and then do it again,
Forty more minutes, my patients wear thin.
I read it ten, fifteen, twenty times in all,
Get thoroughly disgusted, and crumple it up into a ball,
In deep concentration, I make my aim well,
Throw it into the fireplace and the bowels of Hell.
I move away - upset with it all,
And bang my head against a brick wall.