Blaming the Muse

[Leanne]

There she cowers, brow beaten, corner driven -
you have no right to claim her, none to blame her -
yours the shame, the failing, falling short
and caught red-handed and unmanned.

Do not curse her. Your unwritten verse
is not inside her blackened eyes or broken teeth
but lost beneath your own belief of God
as oddment to your so-poetic, apathetic soul.

She was shouting. While you doubted, she would
bellow, should have smelled your putrid block --
instead you mock her - yours the failing, yours
the cause of her demise. You closed your eyes.



"Free-Ranging Allowed, Creative Responses Encouraged".

[Erthona]

A somewhat odd poem to write for someone who is derisive of such ideas as the Muse.
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A nice biting 2 lines here:

but lost beneath your own belief of God
as oddment to your so-poetic, apathetic soul.

Some nice use of enjambment, with the interline rhyme, e.g., block-mock.

'tis the smell of our own putrid block to which we are most inured. Somewhat like rampant halitosis, yet we know it not, for we do not comprehend our own pestilence, and as one blind, and senseless, ask her to lay down with us on soiled sheets, becoming incensed when she refuses.

This reminds me of Proverbs 1:20-28

20 Wisdom shouts in the street,
She [f]lifts her voice in the square;
21 At the head of the noisy streets she cries out;
At the entrance of the gates in the city she utters her sayings:
22 “How long, O [g]naive ones, will you love [h]being simple-minded?
And scoffers delight themselves in scoffing
And fools hate knowledge?
23 “Turn to my reproof,
Behold, I will pour out my spirit on you;
I will make my words known to you.
24 “Because I called and you refused,
I stretched out my hand and no one paid attention;
25 And you neglected all my counsel
And did not want my reproof;
26 I will also laugh at your calamity;
I will mock when your dread comes,
27 When your dread comes like a storm
And your calamity comes like a whirlwind,
When distress and anguish come upon you.
28 “Then they will call on me, but I will not answer;
They will seek me diligently but they will not find me,

[Leanne]

You're not paying attention :p -- the muse might exist, but only as an extension of the psyche, rather like Socrates' daimon. It's no use blaming any esoteric pen-wench for something that's entirely one's own failing.

Wisdom is a different lady entirely. She doesn't prance around half naked on a page, she sits in a corner and orders another coffee while the people around her think they know exactly why she's there and give her a wide berth.

[Erthona]

The way you describe Wisdom sounds like my Muse to me. She does not prance!!! (She told me to tell you that) Maybe it is an extension of the psyche, or maybe that's just some pseudo-science we tell ourselves because the other idea makes us too nervous. There is really no more proof of one as there is of the other, we just have this affectation that one explanation is more sophisticated than the other. Quantum mechanics is as much myth as any myth ever was. As far as getting disconnected from inspiration, that is obviously our own fault.

"Yet, if their song one day falls quiet,
and I am thus robbed of my sight,
it is my pride that brings the blight,
for they are ever faithful."

Dale

[billy]

poor little brow beaten muse.