I’m stuck. Like a cheap truck in a swamp. Like a deer in the headlights. Like a senile actor realizing with horror that he has forgotten what play he is in. I feel like I felt as a closeted gay boy of 16 when my “girlfriend” decided that this was the night we’d go beyond making out and took me to bed. Stuck. Like a fly in the honey, a dick in a fly (ouch), a fish in a bowl or a lost soul.

Writers’ block is no fun.

Who do I think I am daring to punk the muse? Today the muse punks me.

There are those days when everything flows, even if starting from nothing. The first sentence comes, perhaps slowly and painfully, but then the faucet opens and we’re swept away.

Not today, pal. Today it is the drip drip drip of the infamous water torture. It is painful to write and, god help me, I fear it will be painful to read. But I show up at my computer screen, and do my best to punk. Sometimes, there is nothing to be done but scratch and bleed.

What do you want from me? Worst answer: nothing, of course, There’s a trillion books in the library, there’s Facebook, there’s the whole muse-forsaken internet and the truth is you want nada from me. Bubkes.

So why am I sitting here on a Friday afternoon (past my deadline, damn it!) punking away when I could be working out at the gym or looking for a much needed day job or enjoying a bit of pornography or cruising a dating site or walking up a hill or (please) climbing back in bed and falling asleep.

It’s what I do.

When all else is said, when I’ve considered inspiration and politics, art and commitment, discipline and focus and all the thousands of explanations about being an artist and why it matters and why I am responsible and blah, blah, blah, blah blah, it comes down to this: it’s what I do. It either is what I do, or it isn’t. I am an artist, or I’m not. Same for you.

So get on with it.

Here follows one of my favorite poems of all time, by the great, lamented Kurt Vonnegut (from Cat’s Cradle):

We do, doodley do, doodley do, doodley do,
What we must, muddily must, muddily must, muddily must;
Muddily do, muddily do, muddily do, muddily do,
Until we bust, bodily bust, bodily bust, bodily bust.

– Charles Kruger
The Storming Bohemian