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mediocrity paralyzes poets

routine is medicine, until it's not

until the fluorescents

kill the shadows in the grocery line

and you're alone with all the lies you tell

for a paycheck

i'd like to fall in love just to fall out of it

for a poem that might move someone, somewhere

so break my heart, please?

i'll rewrite you, resurrect you in blue ink

memorialize you in metaphor

and when the feeling returns to my fingertips

i'll write you a hundred stanzas

like a receipt for the romance

in exchange for which we sold our sanity