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Page 70

Our expectation determines our upset
with blankness. Doorknobs need not respond,
even, when, bumping into one, we curse it

(unless we are nuts, which means, really,
unless we hold unusual expectations
for doorknobs).

If we have found the blank page
(meaning certain blank pages -- how easily blankness
is generalized!) responsive, easily endowed with life
by our scribbles, magically possessed of a Voice
that can say what we, ourselves, could not have said
before we discovered the blank page (as a child
exchanges with a rag doll love only dimly dreamed of
before first hugging that doll) --

if, after days or years of filling pages with life,
we, one day, meet a blank page that just
stares back at us and will not come to life,
no matter what words we write or cannot write on it --

and now, looking back, our old beloved pages,
even those printed in journals with famous names,
seem as lifeless as canned pitches from computerized voices,
passive-voiced lingo from government contracts,
wooden masks, ancient attitudes in an attitude museum,
formulaic passions we know all too well --

Oh, NOW the blank page is as scary
as Ted Bundy's smile or Manson's mantic mutterings
or a mirror in which, seeking one's own familiar eyes,
one finds no reflection at all.

Note: Need I mention that Bundy and Manson are two notorious serial killers? Has my work lasted THAT long?

Hard for mere poets to compete in longevity with serial killers. I'm am merely a serious borer.

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