I don't feel like being newsy

...so I attempted a quickie poem instead.  (This one is from a "line by line" prompt at WeWritePoems.) 


Writing Assignment

Sloth and frustration –
stacks of books unread, tall and tottery,
     my prison cell;
laptop, staring with accusing eye, shakes its head, disgusted,
     my jailer, glaring, taunts and jingles the keys of freedom.

When I was eight, my gift was a typewriter,
brown and plastic, cheap,
but the best, most official gift ever – I was a writer,
till I sat to spin yarns and came up with dust and drivel.

The sword of Damocles hangs by a thread overhead.
     Yes, again.
The dentist’s lead blanket of humid heat presses my chest,
I hate the pressure.
If only it were Christmas and cold
     (it’s never cold in L.A.),
I would write to the smell of cinnamon and fireplace,
and the eloquence would flow like winter hot chocolate.

Faithful Madeleines and Marys and Annies show up to work every day.
But the wrinkle in my time feels ironed in and permanent
and it’s hard to get up off the couch to walk the field
and I am so far from being a pilgrim of eventual grace.
I said I hate the pressure, but I lied;
that pressure seems my only hope.

In dreams, I fill twenty pages a day with pearls and sand,
     and smile to the interviewer and
     respond to mail with wit and
     declare my success to be born of just showing up to write
          – I just don’t feel whole if I haven’t written today.
My royalty checks would finance my coastal writer’s cottage
     in Mendocino or Maine, where the ocean salt would
     suck the words from my hands.