The Muse

Daniel sends me one last little letter
that he is between nowhere and here
between the past and the present.
That he has left behind the sinking city
and on his last night as the Artist
at his show,
he asked the question that he asked me
months ago.

Does the muse choose the artist or does the artist
choose the muse?

And he was writing me to tell me that
the painters said it was a little of both,
a partnership
but that all the other writers,
at his table,
they all agreed with me.

That we wait patiently for them,
and they come and go like fickle little leprechauns
That we have all known so many in our lives,
all our old heartbreak, scars, laughter recorded on a 6 inch.

And I think to myself, of course the other writers said that too.
None of us are original.
Not any more.

We run around telling people “I love you”
when we mean “turn out the light,”
so says one writer.
We cower at the terrible beauty of lighting
when it hits the mountains and rocks our little boat.
We feel the things that happen to us with a distance,
like looking through the wrong end of a spyglass
so that later we’ll know exactly how it felt
and get it down in ink.

We drink and we fuck
and we fight about high art and low art
and we are all jealous of painters
with their thick fingers and their stained cheeks.
but Original,
is a Muse that left a long time ago
and now lives out her days,
aboard a cruise ship
just south of Fiji
sipping orange drinks and doing nothing at all.