To be a serious poet
Is to continually face
The battering hand of rejection
No value placed on
Words and guts spilled
In ceremony

Onlookers indifferent to the slaughter
Toothpicks fingered between molar and gum
A burp to signal satisfaction

In dark rooms, feet propped up
Life sinks into the crevices between

Cushions

Voices from nowhere tumbling through a
Rinse cycle, drowning out
The silence.


(Previously published in Illogical Muse, Summer Issue 2007)