Bait

“I always start writing with a clean piece of paper and a dirty mind.”
—Patrick Dennis

I took the bristles of an old scrub brush
to get to those gnawing thoughts
but I couldn't get past
the physical barriers;
I couldn't get it up into the scalp
where the dirt resides.

The purity was short-lived,
the endless parade of ideas
and moral complications
have dogged that space
for decades.

Too many influences
for an impressionable soul
to keep a tight seal
on fantasies and persuasions.

But like a clean, laundered sheet
the blank page of pristine white
proves to be accommodating
to the spill of these deviances
and supporting secretions.

But I can't be reborn,
grime don't cease.

Every blank page
is another invitation
to leave a stain.