I’ve tried fifty-eight times
to explain the modern world as
a game show,

started and crumpled sixty-two drafts
about sexual love as
an orchard,

and made two hundred
and thirty attempts at an epic
on the sonic characteristics of each
key on a piano as compared to
the landscapes of nations
along the Mediterranean coasts.

All I have to show for all that work is

one sad brain, garish as a TV soundstage;

self-loathing slumped under an apple tree
that’s been split from age and rot;

a postcard from Tunisia that reads,
“having a decent time, wish you were here;”

this song of three hundred
and fifty failures
that I might yet turn into something
of worth if

I can stop chewing on it long enough
to give myself time to search 
every inch of it
for meat to live on.