Half-Mused Verse

On the fleeting nature of poetic inspiration

Image by Rizki Fauzi

Half-mused verse…

is an etch-a-sketch accidentally shaken, the silent scream at 2 a.m., the image blank by morning while the effect lingers. It’s the jar of sweet pickles that need to be eaten soon, the failed grocery list. It’s the image of zebras grazing on a concrete jungle below a parachutist descending in a hazy sky, a half-brewed ekphrastic needing another splash of cream and a pinch of sugar.

Half-mused verse comes to a screeching halt. It’s where drafts go to die. It’s the alliteration that starts: Melting, molding, MMM, Magnificent Memories Matriculating, or the poem ending, I guess she thought I was her white knight in shining armor, but I just jumped on my horse and got the hell out of Dodge- to be continued, but wasn’t.

Half-mused verse is praying the sun will warm my skin in February; it’s fuchsia azaleas flashing year-round; it’s realizing the lemon-colored daffodils weren’t blooming in March like the neighbors’ because they were, in fact, daylilies. Half-mused verse is your sweet breath warming my skin in February, making me whole again.

Half-mused verse is the sun hiding behind a cloud. It’s a six-year-old with sun-kissed locks ousted from a photo with her twin sister because she plucked the stem off the newly picked tangerine. It’s a 16-year-old with averted eyes being forced to present a urine-infused mattress to prospective takers after IT finally stopped.

Half-mused verse is that “Raisin in the Sun.” It’s the disgraced German teacher at Episcopal High, toting his black guitar case onto campus one last time, but in his grand finale, shooting the school's headmistress point-blank, before turning the gun on himself. I didn't lose my son on this day -no, not yet.

Half-mused verse survived the earthquake in Seattle during his Little Gym class, fluorescent lights swinging, moms and tots taking cover (some lined the walls, some thought it safer to run outside to the parking lot). Coming home to a few crooked pictures and a very startled Doberman and Alaskan Malamute was a lost line in this stanza.

Half-mused verse jerks you awake from a falling dream. It’s divorce papers opened while lounging by my swimming pool in my bikini, those trips to Vegas, the Viagra I religiously counted pre and post-guy-only weekends, the punch that didn't leave a scratch but the scathing insults that did.

Half-mused verse is the third eye of the storm that wakes you up at 2 a.m., where tsunamis flood the obscurity of dreams. It’s an octagonal roadblock in my head that I can’t quite get right. Half-mused verse leaps off the tip of my tongue, whispering that being there at the right time would have made my world whole again and made a place where he could live.

© Ann Marie Steele 2025