a joke

A poet walks into a bar

No this is not a how a poem should start

I heard this joke before but

A poet did walk into a bar

He ordered an empty pint of tasteless beer

The yellow nothing stuff dripped from between his fingers

I heard this joke before but

A skeletal poet did walk in the bar

Ordered a blank page and a vacuum

Words fell on the floor

Our poor Skeletal poet from the stool

Couldn’t move

Beautiful women and men

 with long vacuum fingers

from the floor

sucked the words

I heard this joke before but

I could never hear it till the punchline

One by one, bones fell from a wet

Beer-stenched stool

On the floor:

A blank page

A broken pint

An old fountain pen

And a used poet

Whose bones could never be burnt

For the beautiful women and men

Have taken every last

Word

Out of him