I hesitated to post this piece again, because I’ve run it at least once in the last year or two. It’s an example of “high style” aimed at “low elevation.” Some pretty bad verse going on here, if I say so myself (and I’m thus entitled, since I am the author!). I do hope my reader understands that the composition of this piece when it occurred in 1994 was very much a lark, something to make me laugh at my own lack of inspiration to write something serious. I repeat the verse here because I’m back at one of those times when I haven’t composed anything meaningful, particularly in terms of verse, in some months. What’s worse, the muse seems distantly inclined to me these days, so who knows when something will flow? Meanwhile, here it is, a mouldie oldie, . . .
Disinspiration, or The Poet’s Lament
By David L. Pulling
December 1994
What contradictory power has stemmed the effervescent flow
once bubbling from the fount of invention
in streaming effusion
from fecund well springs
in profound soul regions
to name experience
and dispel malaise
obscuring ritual reality,
but now sputters and hisses
putrid droplets of dribbling dregs
trickling down the fountainhead
in meandering traces
to splash like spit
in powdered sand
that once was bed
to the green rippling pool
whose surging logos tide,
glistening epistemic brine,
grasped brimming shores?
My words are turned to dust,
and my poems distill into transparent vapors.
