Won't Come Easy

They surge within me like a drowning tide. Pushing against the walls of my mind, calling me down to the empty page, then abandoning me, their laughter drowning out the sounds of traffic outside my window. This city won’t let me sleep tonight. Its whispering its secrets to me, of all the hidden places within the people crawling through its layers, of the wells of joy being drained dry by the unquenchable thirst of the miserable. That noisy beast called Traffic’s horns goring my eardrums, leaving them insensate to the laughter of the children I see around my building.
My neighbor’s little girl smiles and gives me a flower everyday she sees me. She’s comes no higher than my knee and her eyes hold all that I wish to write about. Each time she gives me a flower I feel like an undeserving ogre, but I smile and take it, and keep it next to my books until it withers away. I hear my other neighbor yelling at her servant. She’s always yelling, at the servant, at her children, at the building guards. I never hear her yell at her husband. Her husband with the cloying sweet breath and hands that remind me of the bullies of my childhood. No wonder she takes her anger out on everybody but him. She even tried to yell at me once, but something in my eyes stopped her. She saw through me, for a second she saw past the man and saw the animal, the one we all keep chained inside. But she was yelling at her little daughter, and my animal didn’t like that.
Everyday I wake up praying for the rains to come and wash the dust of this year off of me. And everyday I see the clouds blow past without a single tear shed for us down below. I dream these days more than I usually do. Each dream merges into the next until I’m floating through the nightime sky like in Chagall’s painting - with a yellow goat playing the violin guiding me through.
I’m an addict in a prison made from my addiction, I’m a psychedelic prince in a monochromatic world. I’m the last of the poets lost in a crowd, I’m the unfulfilled wish, the dying dream, the undying desire. I’m a Kings of Leon CD playing while making love. I am the last page of the book before your eyes fall asleep. The best cup of coffee left until it got cold. I’m all the words I wish I could write.
Words don’t come so easy no more. They avoid me like disappointed parents who caught me with a joint and a smile. They look at me like my dog does after I yell at him.
I’m….done for tonight…