Sometimes
I reach for the beautiful pen
Wanting
Loops
And graceful turns
Of poetry
To please the page

But find
My fingers fat as sausages
And the pen,
A cactus.
And my heart
Pumping sand
Through the plaque
Congealed
Narrowness
Of my veins

And so I write
The wrongness
So it might
Shift
From staid
And stillness
To the curves
Of energy flow,
The hopeful pen
Smooth on inky magic,
And once again imprinted

With tenderness untroubled.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015