Ode to the Unwritten Poem

I said to myself, "Self, sit down and write a poem.  Its only been a few, uh, decades since the last one."  So here I sit, looking around me, thinking about my day, trying to find a poem.  The air feels thick, like suffocatingly thick.  Like inspiration waiting to be engaged.  All around me are poems, waiting to be written, but I can't see them.  I can feel their presence, just out of reach.  Just out of sight.  Around the next corner.  Waiting.  Waiting to be written.  And if I walk away, they die.

Where are you, unwritten poem?
Why do you hide your face from me?
Show yourself, this is your time
Time to be known, time to be free.

Why can't I see, unwritten friend
Poem I've carried through the day
You've lingered almost to the end
Tell your tale, have your say.

Speak your substance, make us hear
Fill these lines with gracious prose
Caress my heart until it weeps
Down every road your story goes.

Take my hand and lead me through
Some wooded world where life does sway
Amid the light of waking love
The misty dawn of love's first day.

Tell me tales of flying dragons
Wooden ships of ages past
Knights and maidens, friend and foe
Lives erased, and futures cast

Sing of romance, bittersweet
Triumphs of an army strong
Speak of battles lost and won
And passion, right and wrong

Your tale remains beyond my grasp
Without beginning, hast not ended
Without my ears to hear your prayer
Your soul is naught, your birth suspended

I'd like to hear of butterflies
Of singing birds or fuzzy chicks
I'd listen to the lore of bugs
Or stones or streams or sand or sticks.

Oh come now, how about some food
A poem of pizza would suffice
A poem of apple pie would do
Of either one, I'd love a slice

How sad this effort has become
Inspiration lost in spades
How painful is this process now
To sit by as this poem degrades.

I guess it was a silly thought
To waste my precious time at home
To think that I could write a whit
To dream that I could write a poem.

To think you might have tasted life
Had I prolonged, had I been smitten
But tears aren't shed for songs unsung
For life unlived, for poems unwritten.

Yeah, you know what, I'm tired.  Forget this stupid poetry thing.  Why try this junk when I could be sleeping.  Or eating.  Or clipping my toenails.  Yeah.  Nevermind.