Promising

Tire swing imagination
Adolescent anecdotes 
Staying back from recess to perfect
The pulse of novel inspiration
I’ve made it known I want to be a writer:
The future doctor-bankers laugh,

And I am mired in chagrin 
Journalling my heroes,
Ascribing names and rising actions 
And their unanticipated falls,
I envision novels by eleven,
Collecting composition notebook stories, 
Pencilling my chapters:
Odd beginnings 
That may never see their ends 

At fifteen, broken heart and broken stories,
I am executing magnum opus aspirations 
Sending out my novels for consideration 
Stymied by my youth and inexperience  

I thought by now I’d be a monarch 
With a thriving a literary kingdom, 
Yet one naysayer tailgates the next, 
And I am at my poor wit’s end 

I had never better understood the writer 
With the hots for Audrey Hepburn 
Until they said it plainly:
“Promising.” 

My keyboard floats away,
And I sit at an old typewriter
Painted in cerulean blue shades
Capturing the beat of these celestial encounters 
Yet this is not the age of iceberg connotations 
And a bathroom brawl involving phallus size
There are no bullfights and no Riviera sighs
No studio with women who can barely write 
Picasso doesn’t frolic with his lovers 
And there are few Americans with memoirs 
Over cups of tea in France
The pages of the paper 
Felt crisp over your cheek 
I have never seen a rightful honor 
For a journalistic wonder
And these illiterary monkeys 
Do not lend me their attention

I will send my work your way 
Perhaps you will attend to me 
Yet what is this frustration 

With every day I wonder what it’s like to be a writer 
I thought I would have been a warrior
With scores of headlines muttering my name
Yet as a jailbird confined to windowless proceedings
Mired in this lunatic opaqueness
There is nothing else to do but write

She said that it was up her alley 
But then she did not fall in love 
Well I have known a thing of love 
And though you cannot force it 
There are always spells to cast 
And nimble tricks to play 
And ultimately there is someone there 
For someone else 
If bores and sinners find their match  
Then where is mine 

I had a dream I had a child in a basket 
I was in a one-piece swimsuit 
We were lounging on the beach 
Beneath the scattered sun umbrellas 
And the sun was shining wildly upon us 
I was in my cat’s-eye glasses 
Dreaming of the Spanish Riviera 
I brought my picnic basket to the water 
Pigtails done up on my head 
I let the basket go, and hours later,
Recuperating all of my belongings,
I propped open the casket 
And my child was without a limb 
Gasping out for air 
Clinging to my thigh
Fearfully and viciously 
And then it died 

After all the days I’ve spent in education 
Drawing up ideas 
Seeking out revisions 
From the men who do it best 
I cannot find support
In this work I see myself
I wish I could retain
The nuances that make it mine

They said never to give up 
And indeed I have spent decades 
Searching for an agent
Diversifying my opinions 
Curtailing what I’ve had to say 
Yet with every passing moment 
The stage lights seem impossible
If you, sir, know of any agents 
Reading letters
I would gladly pass along my novel 
Yet there are things in there 
I probably should not have said