Poetry Train Monday - 107 - Squandered

Continuing on with my year of found poetry, this is a short piece of prose fiction that I wrote as an exercise when I belonged to a writer's group in Yarmouth. I've reworked it here as a poem.

Ride the Poetry Train!


Squandered


Terry glanced down
At the worn felt
Yellow, purple, blue monster sitting
On his right hand
Tusks bent for lack of stuffing

Terry had a sudden
Stabbing memory
An especially windy street performance
Wonky torn from his hand and Bill
Had actually chased the puppet
Into traffic
Nearly getting crushed
In the process
He returned with a
Drippy Wonky

Terry had felt
A ridiculous urge to
Hug Bill
For his heroism

Thank God
Bill would have thought
It was just
Terry's creative personality
Effusing over
Normal social boundaries

Terry had often
Wondered
How he'd ever been
Friends
With such a
Conservative straight arrow like
Bill

Or how Bill managed
To religiously meet with Terry
For workshop sessions
Bill the editor
To Terry's throw-another-one-out-there style

He supposed
Those afternoons
Were Bill's only forum for
Creativity

He tried to take it
From the top

One more time

The old routines
Were not
What he was
Looking for

It was hard
To shake himself up
To natter to thin air
How was he to
Bounce things
Off himself?

He supposed he'd have to learn how

Bill was gone

Bill was dead

Now
All he had left
Was a schizophrenic puppet
Who had holes for an identity

Wonky was trying his best
Wasn't he?
But all his ideas
Were duds


- Julia Smith - June 28, 2009 - original text 2001