[My contribution to this week’s Poetry Rehab prompt http://andytownend.com/2016/02/08/poetry-101-rehab-papers/ is another prose poem from a time before computers, a quarter of a century ago.]

The Desk Lamp

My desk lamp illuminates me. Suspends most of the world in undistracting shadow. Especially, it dispenses its luminosity to my unclothed hands and face. It clothes my skin with a glow of self-importance. It inspires and encourages me; a benign Cyclops, lays a single avuncular arm around me and persuades me that I could write, if I wanted, not about concrete objects only, but about myself.

But, when I notice the far greater brilliance it imparts to the page beneath my hands, I am driven to leave all but a fraction of it magnificently blank.