SLAM!

"Bite Marks" 

Sick of being civilized, I nibble at the pencil
between the molars; the temptation
is always there, but then, some glamour
has to be my statutory right
with chewed-out wood hurled at the wall
and bewildered notes scattered about.

"Replace the habit," they said,
"Lean on the keyboard and the screen's
omnipresent speed to accept
an impersonal success; after all,
words are words whichever way
they are born; and please, stay away
from stress"; yet, the keyboard is a bitter love,
which makes the muse shrink and the mind--
a perennial adolescent--change its voice.

Then, like lovers in between sheets,
the hands, too, need to feel the scratching
of lead No.2, boisterous, magical, and with
bite marks, swooning into rapture, to descend
into creation's bad habit abyss.