Nothing is More Dangerous than a Pissed Off Poet.

In honor of Lexington Poetry Month...The Monster.


The monster comes on big, flat feet,
That beat, beat, beat,
Against the hardwood floor.
Gaping mouth drips with glitter and gore,
From the victims who have come before.

Like Gabrielle,
Who left her surgeon husband and life of ease,
To join Cirque de Soleil and learn the trapeze.
At two hundred feet, she felt her confidence crack,
As the monster whispered from below in the black,
You’re too old and fat to soar so high,
Only the beautiful and young can fly.

In mid-air, she lost the hope once found,
And went plummeting toward the ground.
The monster waited to break her fall
And swallowed her up sequins and all.

Then there was John,
Who traded in his briefcase for a Gibson guitar,
Which he took each night to a Honky Tonk bar.
Where he doled out his heart one note at a time,
To the lonely and lost without charging a dime.

The monster moved through the shadows to the front of the crowd,
And hissed in a voice both soft and loud,
There is nothing special about that song,
The melody’s weak and the chords are wrong,
And the verse has nothing new to say,
You’re just a pathetic, off-pitched cliché.

The minstrel continued to croon and strum,
Until the monster struck him dumb,
With a simple statement,
You are such a disappointment to your mother.

The monster devoured him right there on the stage,
Washed him down with a shot of Ancient Age,
Then wiped away the despair and drool,
And challenged the bouncer to a game of pool.

And now, the monster comes for me.
On big flat feet,
That beat, beat, beat across the hardwood floor. 

It stands at the foot of my bed...
With eyes burning red,
Boring a hole,
Through sheets, skin, soul
Like lasers.
Teeth like razors.
Dripping down the creature’s face,
Are John’s talent and Gabrielle’s grace.

In horror, I gasp, “What are you?”
Silence engulfs the room,
It becomes cold as a tomb.

Then, the monster speaks:
You can call me conformity, greed, slayer of schemes.
Ignorance, complacency, destroyer of dreams,
Apathy, organized religion, a corporate career,
But most of my friends just call me Fear.

Alright, fear,
Make yourself clear.
What do you want from me?

Your forlorn flesh between my teeth.
No meat tastes as sweet as that of a carcass sucked clean of creativity.
If you don’t want to feel my wrath,
Step back onto the beaten path.

Instinct kicks in…

From my bedside, I grab my trusty pen
And search for a chink in his scaly skin
I intend to stab him again and again!

But a voice from somewhere deep inside demands,
Don’t fight, write!

My Mont Blanc becomes a sacred sword,
My notebook is my shield
I need no greater weapon,
It is words that I will wield.

As Ink pours onto the eager page,
I feel the monster’s enveloping rage.

Do you really think your drivel will stand the test of time?
No one cares about your insipid rhyme.
And the novels you’ve penned are an outright crime.

I keep writing.

So, you plan to spend your days weaving stories at the lake?
I ask you, how many hack writers does it take…
To actually earn a living.

I keep writing.

He continues his rant right up until dawn,
But still the words march on and on,
Strong, secure, and sure as a sage.
Until they fill the entire page…
And then the entire tome.  

When they have nowhere else to roam.
Each word breaks free like a killer bee,
And makes a feast of the beast.
Adjectives and verbs sting him until he yells and swells,
Beyond recognition.
Exclamation points gauge out his eyes until he cringes and cries.
A Sentence wraps itself around his neck like a noose.
He writhes to get loose.
But, a cavalry of nouns riding wild hyphens drags him across the floor and out the door.

As he staggers to his feet and stumbles down the street, I yell,
“That’s what you get for pissing off a poet.”