Down and out writer

Once; back then I
grabbed and tore at things, revealing
the brush strokes and soft charcoal
that lay under normal wrappers,

and the ignorant would rush
to see my magnified discoveries,
so emptily excited at a
mere smudge.

Now; lackadaisical or careworn
I know not which,
my weakened grasping reveals empty
handfuls of swampy relevance

rendering me impotent to extract
anything; the most I can manage
is a garbled comment.