I offer this sacrifice to you o muses
let this ink
be your blood
let this life
be siphoned
until you
are replenished
let the dry husk
be discarded

they like my pens to suffer
to bleed
slowly
dry

I must be careful though

if one escapes
before
it is finished

the muses

will be angry

they will make me

write
embarrassing things

[Brendan McBreen is a Poet and workshop facilitator with Striped Water Poets in Auburn Washington. He is a humorist, a haiku writer, a student of Zen and Taoist philosophy, psychology, a collage artist, a sometimes cartoonist, and a Gemini. Brendan is an event coordinator with Auburn AugustFest and a former coordinator of the August Poetry Postcard Fest. In 2009 he was awarded a residency at the Whiteley Center in Friday Harbor. Brendan has featured in various regional venues and is published in many journals including: Raven Chronicles, Bellowing Ark, Crab Creek Review, bottle rockets, Leading Edge, Farther Stars Than These, Origami Condom, Circle Show, the anthology In Tahoma’s Shadow, anthologies from Kind of a Hurricane Press, and in the U.K. journal: The Delinquent.]