In the dream, I am walking on a cracked-earth plain,

squinting into the pounding sun, wondering

when this creative drought will end.

I look down to the crunch beneath my feet

and realize I am trudging on a field of Scrabble tiles.

In the other dream, I am looking for a place

to sit and write. I find a park bench,

but there is no room. It is crowded, like a rack,

with giant Scrabble tiles, lined up to spell

the word E₁ X₈ P₃ E₁ N₁ D₂ S_1.

When I wake, I realize why

there has been no rain on my plain,

no room on the bench:

I’ve expended all my verbal energy

these past few weeks playing Scrabble,

going head-to-head with a computer opponent

lurking in the software game I acquired from

of all places, a cereal box.

I’ve read that book by Fatsis about Scrabble pros

and wondered if I’ve become one of “them”,

the near-crackpots who devote their whole lives

to studying and playing this infernal game.

Lately, it seems, I have derived more joy

from discovering words like Y₄ U₁ R₁T₁ and Q₁₀ U₁ I₁ N₁ O₁ A₁ –

words I may never use again –

than from a well-turned sonnet or metaphor.

The words, after a while, become an end in themselves –

strings of letters on a board for maximum points –

but it’s a clinical creativity.

I want to get dirty with words again.

I want the muse to come in torrents, I want

to slosh in the mud of poetry.

So I break the cycle of this great but addictive game –

I sweep the tiles from the park bench,

I turn my face up to glorious rain,

and start composing again, with a word at a time,

not letters scrambled face down in a box.

11/17/2003

Posted on 11/17/2003
Copyright © 2024 Bruce W Niedt