Defeated

Defeated
Reading what I have just written,
I  stop as if almost on the brink,
On seeing  a kind of artificial mist
Spread over my blank paper.

Why did I stop? I wonder.
Perhaps this was not
What I wanted to say,
And adorned my thoughts
In garish colours, making them
Look like their clumsy cartoons. ....

Same thing happens
When I go to my easel.
But on the blank canvas before me
Chaos is all that what I see,
My brush freezes—I can not paint .....

Oh, what has happened to me?
I feel as if trapped in a tunnel,
Full of darkness and  deafening silence:
Whose door is shut so tightly
That  nothing will escape, nothing will enter.
There seems to be an endless blankness
All around me and spreading on.
Like a drowning person fighting  for a breath,
With great effort I pull myself back,
And with a sigh of resignation,
Close my notebook and turn the empty canvas
Inward against the wall.

© Portia Burton