Is there a reason for it

Is there a reason for it

What do you think?

Some people develop rubber necks

Wag sponge tongues

Talk in empty soundbites or paraphrase

A juicy tabloid, feeding tidbits to the masses

In a frenzy of sensationalism

But when it is on the mad box attached to a wall

With a grip on your throat like a frozen fist

It is hard to ignore

If I sit here long enough I might get my toes gnawed off

By a hungry rat

Even without war, they are never far away

It is probably just ego

But if I am a poet

Then maybe I should write something,

Not just anything but an epic

A tragedy of Homeric proportions

Be as pretentious

As every other guy who has never troubled

The literary supplements

The breadth of my ignorance

Is wider than the river Styx

So I sit glued to the news

Hoping for a breakthrough

Self-flagellating

Convinced I have no talent

Before condemning my lack of self-belief

Isn’t that just typical of the woebegone

Is that what most of us become

Lost in the margins, as our stories

Are overwritten by more adventurous souls

If I was an explorer

Where would I end up

Frozen in mid-sentence

Beneath an ice-cap

When, as John-Luc would say

The final frontier is time itself

Which pretty much sums me up

Too old for madcap gestures

Too young to give up the ghost

So here I sit, in an approximation of self-interest

Rebuilding a belief system

To keep company with my inaction

Even as the world runs away with itself

And junior reporters

Fresh out of deportment school

With the first blood of hard copy

Staining their fingers

Hunker-down, casting

One eye on the ratings

And the other one on escape