Clawing through dunes of words,
I meet an apparition
with a beard and a Ph.D. in Classics.
"Look on my works, ye mighty,
and enclose
a $35 reading fee!"
I write myself a camel to ride
and press on with my caravan of ideas.
I am a self-addressed
stamped poetess,
A statue of myself with a crown
of alliterative references,
robed in stone, holding
a scepter of dust.
Actually, it's noon and I'm still in bed with a laptop computer.
I am wearing my boyfriend's tee shirt instead of a lyrical swath of silk
or a poetically pitiful sackcloth
or wreath of laurels.
I am writing about writing,
and I am writing about publishing
and not publishing.
I am not writing about swans.
I am not writing about clouds.
I am not writing about somber walks through dense
forests of literary gravity.
I am not writing about my heart.

I drop my own name like a cheap champagne glass
just to hear it shatter,
like trying a new style,
like refusing to pick up the pieces
of portraits in eraseable pen.

Do I really need to go on for another page an a half
to make the first line worth reading?
Professor Colossus says yes
with his stern stone brow.