With My Eyes Closed
Tonight, I composed twelve carefully chosen lines,
Into four tightly wound, tersely woven stanzas,
Consisting of fewer than a hundred words.
And when I finished, I celebrated my accomplishment.
John Milton, in his blindness,
Dictated, to his daughters, the entirety of Paradise Lost,
Over a period of six years,
Devoting his tedious, arcane mind, meter by cadence,
To disclosing Satan's disgrace of God and mankind,
While I, with my eyes closed, needed only 97 words —
A mere pittance of his prolix "epic" —
To tout the grandiose drama of my heroic rise from fire.
01/23/09 - (3)
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