Lazy, Annoying Bug

I need an idea, I say to me

It’s a lie

The truth is they are everywhere

Summer gnats boring through screen holes

Surreptitiously biting the most tender skin, right at the temple, where I yank my irreverent hair out of my eyes and scratch at my noggin 

I swat at them weakly, scrawling notes in journals I can never find

Sometimes I smash them into a slightly bloody, unreadable carcass on a calendar page nearby, left behind when the page turns to tomorrow, and tomorrow becomes today, and again

In the shower, there’s a brief flash, causing a jab in the eye with the washrag, perhaps a memory cue that will stick

The back of an envelope I didn’t want to open from the bank 

Has a scrawled note about the genesis of a bestseller which will no doubt heal what the bank has to say.

Aha, the joke of the day came easier.

But time now to sit, the best part, the hardest part, the only part.

I still think I have nothing, grasping that lie, one lazy, annoying bug.  

Hey, look, over there, under that book, there’s that envelope, I remember that now

Can’t read it all, but there’s a single, bereft word, barely legible, a tiny matchstick, sentry for a small flame

And we are off, the matchstick, the gnats and me

I said I had nothing

Yet again, I was wrong.