SHOWDOWN AT THE O.K. CORONA
(In the old days before the Word Processor)
-- Circa, 1970's --

Calmly, confidently,
virgin parchment inserts
blank expression
into rubber-roller mouth,
then back out again
its white tongue wagging.

Fingers fumble, palms sweat,
eyes avert, then close,
while Dream strokes
Memory's keys
with the skill of a blind swimmer
wading out to drown
in a sea of alphabet soup.

Thoughts, words, and gestures
become one
as graceful as ballerinas
without any toes:
side-stepping split infinitives;
dodging dangling participles;
colliding all the while
into misplaced modifiers.

An inky boa constrictor
wraps its black coils
around my brain.
Tomorrow the newspaper headlines
might read:
FRUSTRATED WRITER COMMITS SUICIDE
HANGS HIMSELF WITH TYPEWRITER RIBBON.
Sometimes my sanity is saved only
by Liquid Paper and correction tape.
 
 

~ Bud Evans (c) 1978 ~