Bad Ode

It seems that you, oh absent Muse,
have stol'n my inspiration.
there's nothing I can do, it seems,
to post some sweet creation,
proceeding from a brain inspired
by beauty, love, temptation...

I tried to settle on some theme
that others might find winning;
a poem "To Beauty" - trouble is,
the word gets my head spinning
round definitions old and new -
on this my hope's not pinning.

Oh Muse divine, you took from me
the very heart for writing.
The notes I pen, pictures I post,
quotations I am citing,
do not show what stirs in my soul -
my fingernails I'm biting.

Even the very form for odes
escapes my keen attention.
I write in rhyme, that's easy 'nough,
but rhythm, feet, pretension
to foll'wing rules of English ode
is lost, as is convention.

The day before this one began
I sat in silence, thinking
about the subject I should write,
my eyes they went a'blinking.
My God! Not e'en my body will
support me! I am sinking

Into a great depression, and
there seems no cure awaiting.
Perhaps, oh Muse, you might suggest
a remedy! I'm hating
this inactivity of mind,
this "genius" abating!

Perhaps tomorrow I will find
my inspiration turning
back to the place it first began
to lead me, thoughts a'burning,
back to "the room" Virginia Woolf,
the writer, wrote of, yearning!

But, until then, sad rhymes like this
will be this poor hack's potion
to soothe the needs her readers have,
forestall a real commotion,
should she be past it, over, spent -
she cannot bear that notion!