A stuck poem is never

a good thing for a poet. Sometimes they

sit in your wrists, clogged

somehow, jammed up and not written.  

(Those might be the wrists with carpal tunnel pain.)

We've all seen poets with poems

stuck on their shoulder, weighing

them down, forcing a bend or a hunch where

they should be upright. Shoulders carry a

poem for a lifetime in some cases, creating imbalance

and falls. I've seen those shoulders. (You have, too.)

Never let a poem get stuck in you heart, oh no, never

there. Making the heart beat wildly, or not all, a poem

stuck in the heart inflicts only mayhem, like an intersection

where the stop sign was stolen in the night. The poem

stuck in your heart is the poem that owns you,

like a thousand-year mortgage. 

The loins. No, no, no. A poem

stuck there is second only to the one

in your heart. Dream it out, work it out, or

screw it out, but never let a poem fester there.

Those are the poems that turn you inside out, making

you silly and a wee bit crazed.

You may appear to others like you're riding the 

Ferris wheel and the Scrambler at the same time

at the State Fair.  

If your poem is stuck in your feet, you know

just what to do. Move them, don't soak.

Pound the pavement, scale the

mountain, walk the beach. It’ll come out

as a poem or in newly toned leg muscles, or maybe both.

If a poem must be stuck, wish it be

there in your fingertips. Burning and tingling,

reminding you that you have words, words, words

to tap out, to scratch onto the napkin, to write

in blue ink on your palm. Your fingertips, that's where

you want to find your poem each morning.