The Morning After the Night Before

“So how was your first workshop with PoetsWall?”

It dawned, I knew some lines at night,

but whisky, wryly climbed to bed,

self-reassuring I’d recall,

though rarely had or not at all.

The next I wrote, fast, early hour,

to type it up, a type for more,

but crabby voice saw crabby scrawl,

deciphered, sound McGonagall.

How can I focus, morning walk,

on planting limbs, repeating lines;

which sets the rhythm, slows the pulse,

but drumming terms or freezing feet?

So urgent, door, I need relief,

not diuretics but a sheet

to pluck back words from winding path -

empty, memory overload.

Collective others know the same,

the muttering like rhyming slang,

poetic tinnitus, it chimes,

to single phrase, become averse.

If only Pitman tool in box,

though that no use in cloak of night,

and would it stay while lift the pad -

where does it blow, thick mist instead?

But then I heard, dictate the words,

so hear it later when replayed.

I feel I’m Einstein, time is mine,

the tape across the finish line.

Except those whispers overcome

by someone snoring near machine;

so not for me, the Open Mic -

she parrots poems while asleep.