One of my metapoems, written five years ago. Peace to your ♥!

Poor Dumb Bruce

Hear my tale of a man named Bruce
Who drank a gallon of creative juice.
(Wanted to write but wasn’t able—
Should’ve read the warnin’ on the paper label.)

Round about ten that juice started workin’;
Poor dumb Bruce found his finger bones jerkin’.
His brain began to swell with all that inspiration;
Turns out, too, it was good for constipation.
(Sorry, ladies, to speak so rough;
Creative juice is powerful stuff.)

By eleven o’clock Bruce still was feelin’ poorly
‘Cuz he hadn’t wrote a word, an’ it was botherin’ him sorely,
But just when he thought it weren’t no use,
The floodgates opened, and the rhymes let loose.
(Shame there weren’t time for celebratin’,
Not with a gallon inside done percolatin’.)

Bruce, he wrote like a man possessed;
That liquid muse wouldn’t give him no rest.
He wrote so fast, his pencil started smokin’
(Sounds like a whopper, but I ain’t jokin’).
He wrote so long, his critter up and died
(Cross my heart—I ain’t never lied).

Came a day when the juice ran dry.
You should’ve seen Bruce, my, oh my!
He leaped from his chair like he was nipped in the behind
And would’ve kept his balance if he hadn’t lost his mind.
Now he never drinks a thing; he only goes fishin’;
A man without a critter, a man without ambition.
(And don’t be forgettin’ ‘bout that heap o’ paper wasted,
All ‘cuz he gulped when he should’ve only tasted.)

© Stephanie Malley