Writer’s Block by Kevin Balance

I love you. You don’t love back. I give you these verses. You put me on the rack. You take my thoughts and spin them to all the wrong words. You take those words and order them in all the wrong sequences. I can’t to write a sentences saves my life. I list three actions and you spit back running, to love, parallels. I describe a scene, blushing red, and you spit out a dangling modifier. I give to you and one spits up disagreement. Back to the masters I go. Read, reread, mimic, write. Oh Laura. Petrarch. Deep breath. Recompose.

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The Red Dot by Kevin Balance

In the forest through the trees camouflaged by a dark bower of ferns sits a big red dot plumb on the ground as in a landscape in a gallery at the musee des beaux arts. Some even look right at it but still march idly on. Working not with his eyes but with his trowel and spade the peasant finds this spot that transports him to anytime, anywhere. He begins to see things from the corner of his one unpatched, glass eye. He becomes a Tiresias in Greece, a Soothsayer in Rome. Over summers and winters of ignored augury a history begins to form. A myopic paradox builds on itself—grows stronger and more verdant with each penned text. An archetype is born squarely on the big red dot. The circle holds strong for a long, long time until the rogue muse frays its edge. And in that fray a bartering occurs: eyes for eyes, archetype for evolution. So with an unseen splash our play begins.

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