The Writer's Block Poem by Richard Weissman

There midst the glass stained reflective table,
The table which writhes obsequiously at pen's brush with paper,
There midst James leathered Bible, opened Webster's and Tabasco,
There midst words immortal - of Rilke with starry-eyed covers,
of black Burroughs,
of victoriously determined, stone cold Yeats, stone cold Eliot,
There midst the trumpet of Gabriel, summoning naked martyred saints from near and distant past,
There sits the weeping, voiceless madman,
Writing what is not to be written,
Not to be read,
No, not by a publisher,
Nor by a race,
Breaking all rules of etiquette,
Breaking all, risking all,
All so that conformity, rigidity and hypocrisy might wither,
Authoring embodiment, personification of literary taboos,
Writing anything, everything - even these tabooed words.
There he sits - pained, sleepless, destitute,
Reminiscing, extrapolating, creating,
Creating ingenious labyrinths to be worn by minds of a dying breed,
Labyrinths depictive, suggestive, indicative... indicative reflections,
Reflections upon the surface as it appears, as it is, as it might be.
The writer's block - timid souls stand clear,
lest clandestine caverns be illumined,
This block draws lines nowhere,
Depicts reality brutally, accurately, wholly - and without moral revisions.
Timid souls stand clear for it shatters illusions, hopes and shadows without distinction, without discrimination,
Until, at last, the block itself is shattered,
And in its wake,
A vast emptiness which no philosopher's stone can fill.

- Excerpted from, "Voices of the Dark" (1991)