Why I don't write as well as Neruda

I don't have the same drive to write as I did in the Fall of First Year anymore... it's such boredom, I think. I've been reading Alberto Moravia's novel titled Boredom. The protagonist is a pampered, disimpassioned artist, and he described it perfectly: "...slowly but surely boredom had come to be the companion of my work during the last six months, until finally it had brought it to a complete stop on that afternoon when I slashed my canvas to tatters; it was rather like a deposit of lime in a spring which, in the end, blocks the passage and brings the flow of water to a complete standstill."
I haven't done any slashing yet, except when pretending to be an elf on Oblivion.

Here's something I forced myself to write yesterday at Starbucks

Why I don’t write as well as Neruda

…he knows not what company he brings—Eliza Marie

I could argue that Neruda had a beach house
and wind that waltzed in the shadows of pines
the sea licking the voluptuous toes of the beach
and twenty one horses beating hoof prints
into the earth: How could he not write poetry?
And I at Starbucks, the wind sweaty
with the steakhouse kitchen grease from next door,
sapling islands engulfed in the parking lot Black Sea,
and the twenty one hundred autocars all desperate
to leave, glide goodbye in single motion.
A crumpet-sized bird lands in the chair
across from mine and reads me, disapprovingly.
On this concrete shore, she knows not
what company she brings.
On this concrete shore: How could I not write poetry?

05/30/10
Wo Chan

2:22 AM-Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010