A Poem I Can't Write

Eyes closed
like the scribbled notebook
resting on my chest
pressing me deeper into leather armrests
under the growing weight
of the half formed poem inside.
Inside the notebook or my mind?
Both, hopefully.
Neither, maybe.

Half drowned and soggy,
soaking in stale lines,
sinking lower with the light outside,
downing, bowing to the
dusk rising higher
while the sky ignites in crimson fire,
blushing with secrets in a choir or rhymes,
hushing, hiding inspired lines
tumbling, jumbled inside my mind
like thoughts without static cling
about life-cycles and streams,
grammar and beauty
sparking briefly
before dying in the embers of the wood burning stove
warming my toes
and suddenly sprouting a shrill
escape of vapor
whistling through a fuming buoy,
a bare old kettle heralding
me to tea
and the poetry
I've been blinded from,
fighting to write the right lines
while I'm inside
a better poem,
the real poem.