Writer’s block,

|W|r|i|t|e|r|'|s| |B|l|o|c|k|'|s|

|A|ngst crouches behind
a wall, to tease, to torment;
|B|lind fingertips to braille
the |C|overt spaces hidden
beneath |D|ark troughs
of blackboard memory,
old and chewed through,
to an |E|ntry long |F|orgotten.
It is no longer taught,
this rou/gh/ spoken speech
that would one day make
a solid strike of wood
against

linen.

There are peeled layers
of embossed thought,
chipped green, if green
can be remembered
as the side with the |A|
where the thumb slides
up and over the slant side
and down the back-side.

A beveled, tooth-honed tool,
the junction of |A| & |B|D|E|,
where drool, paint chip
and crayon meet
in language meringue
of froth and spittle.
Their cries are stopped
by the clot of glottal dust;
the voiceless, unstopped pale moanings;
the schwa-boiled ahhhs fading into ohhhs
as spade-sharp, pearl'd implements
pry the cover of sleep.

Battlefield plunder stuffed
in the mouths of babes,
that a vain and foolish child
would someday play with names
where Eris rode on thundered hooves,
toy horses slipped within its aching walls,
licensed to loot this little sack of troys;

to bag the four consonants
of the world,

chew away big chunks
of red and blue and yellow,
let the sound gnaw through;
the babble of bilabial voices,
voiced and voiceless choices,

in the honks of fabled geese
that flock to green palatial fields
dressed in fine South English speech.
But, for the geese turned goose
that tried the speak of Northern kings
without success, his speech just screech;
goose-chased from the royal kirk garth,
foiled by a long forbidden church yard's
unfamiliar sound he'd learned by block,

by turn, where the scars of used teeth
bit into velar chops, the shops stacked
with their staggered old words
strewn over gold velum carpets;
Urns of oiled verbs poured down
from opened alveolar stoppers
that clicked with 'the', the 'the'
now heard sticking, its new
choppers chomping wood,
though the green and blue
were long since discarded
for a perfectly lusterous hue,

a jewel encrusted fricative
where a poet's rare collection
of cherished of's and oxen hooves
are displayed in hand-rubbed boxes
- a fisherman's favorite tied flies -
and rarer yet, Verner's in-Laws,
Germanic artifact's of |D|B| and /g/,
falsely accused to be /p/t/k/'s,
(which we have not got in any hue)
judged to be voiceless voicing flaws
scratched, stretched and tainted ways
of an /eksit/ and an /egzit/ saved
/that Vermeer could well have painted./
Oddities of writer's blocks
striking the tongue against
the soft palate of the stars
with the sound of

chalk dust.