Self-Portrait as the Person from Porlock After Yet Another Poetry Fail

I’m the stick in the spokes, the concocted 
        knuckle-rap, the punch line to the knock-
knock joke you’ve heard many times before 
        that’s only a blurted Moo. I’m the button-
holer, the nope, a flung wrench, the reason 
        nothing coheres. Remember long ago,
watching on TV all those millions of balloons 
        rise up over Cleveland in a rhapsodic
polka-dotted swarm before plummeting
        way too soon? That’s not unlike what I do.
I’m a cold front, a downdraft, latex detritus 
        drifting aimless on Lake Erie waves.
All those plans you had for a cascade
        of lines in which an oh-yeah is transcribed 
like a boss? That’s over, thanks to me.
        Try to bushwhack your way back to what 
you chose to be holy, and you won’t find
        any ants undoing a sparrow’s throat 
beneath a honeyed light that just won’t quit,
        but instead some Facebook trawling
as you try to figure out whatever happened
        to Rotor Man, who was never not spinning 
on that one ride, staring nowhere and into
        nothing while being pressed against the wall 
before the floor dropped out again.
        I’m the dropped-out floor sold for scrap 
after the amusement park’s Hail Mary failed.
        I’m the fragment, the shard, the DOA 
song, that moment when what you wanted
        to make most of all takes a turn from
the boundless into Oh-shit-this-is-what-
        it-will-be. I’m Autocorrect insisting
three times in a row that by Porlock you meant
        Potluck all along. You know this already, 
but it’s worth repeating again: There’s no table
        heaped with a communal feast waiting 
for you in the offing. If anyone arrives
        at your door bearing a Bac’n-Bits-garnished 
casserole I wouldn’t recommend, rest assured
        it’ll only be me.

Read more from Issue 23.1.