"crumbling crayons" (P.o.t.D. 1/21/15)

Even though we're doing the best that we can,
We have to work with crumbling crayon
On a crumpled old newspaper
Fished out of the trash,
With a faint odor of dead bass...

You see, not everyone's given the same tools -
I can't assume your life has been easy,
Or that your events mirror my own.

I may be wrong.
This may not be my best.
Fear pulls me back,
Saying, "If you don't try,
Then rejection's not..."

Everything feels half-finished,
half thought out in a
whimsical improv,
passed through once,
to be forgotten tomorrow.

(Oh, but I am saving these,
Perhaps to revisit one day)

A lot of projects started,
But not "colored in";
Life is full of distractions.

Where's the punch?
Where's the shock?

Mine's not a life with abuse,
Or with fights with authority,
Or with trauma...

Oh, but there is that little demon, addiction;
And there is that touch of insanity;
And maybe something can be learned from that
Impending failure, dogging my heels through the years...

I write this, as a conversation with you,
Instead of trying to hijack your mind's pilot
To paint a vivid scene,
Telling your senses exactly
What they are experiencing.

My defeatist says a far better poem
Would be in five stanzas,
Each describing your basic senses -
The colors in your eye,
The tones in your ear,
The textures upon your skin...

If I want to work at it,
To make it a little more memorable,
Then I'd add a meter and a rhyme
To fence the stanzas in,
Lest they run wild.

I've given up on this poem,
The one you're reading now -
The mathematician in me
Is screaming for better order and structure;
While the storyteller
Is chiding me for the
Excessive director's commentary.

Alas, thus ends this first draft.
Maybe I need to rub the crayons' crumbles,
Along the newspaper's crumples,
And see if I can make
A modern-day shroud of Turin,
Remembering the fish I ate last night?