Why it's called a dead line

When it's more important that something be said
than to have a an original thought in your head,
when the empty page and silent air
demand that some content be uploaded there,
when the job is "say something" not "something to say"
because it's assumed there's new stuff every day,
then the writer and reader in each topic sector
both lose, from disuse, their nonsense detector.

601

When I got to six hundred
I thought "might be done"
but then came another
so here's six-oh-one.

Entering the cliché competition

I went for broke
and bet the farm;
the ace up my sleeve
(aside from my arm)
was the ants in my pants —
I barely could stand it;
got my ducks in a row
and made out like a bandit.

To infinitive and beyond

To precisely and carefully,
comically, artfully, casually, vexingly split
an infinitive, writers must
humbly, loquaciously, patiently let
all the words in between do their bit.

Cargo Cult

The art of a fact lies in juxtaposition;
words boxcar'ed together particularly.
But open these boxcars and mostly they're empty;
books are just maps, territorially.