To Write a Poem...

I said to you:

breathe, feel, let the words pour out of you

because they already live within your marrow.

I said to you:

poetry comes as easily as a heartbeat,

unthinking, pounding, every quiver of your ventricle

a stanza, every rush of blood to your arteries, a couplet.

I said to you:

you are the Lord of your own life. 

Bring forth light, banish the darkness—

if you wish it, it will Be.

But now,

the revisionary Messiah,

I say to you:

it is not so.

Poetry is a fickle mistress. 

She is tantalising, her hips swaying down the street,

bringing waves of longing like a storm to a ship: wood beckons

the end on water. Now and again, a flash of lightning words,

illuminating a landscape untouched, unexplored, 

beautiful without understanding. But the thunder rolls,

and we are deafened. These words, these lines,

these little rhymes and rhythms that we clutch to us

like blankets to a child: they dissipate, light smothered by darkness.

Poetry is as a storm: she comes as suddenly as she goes,

and Heaven above, she will leave you with nothing if she can.

And Poetry, that woman with the Devil inside of her,

will make sure that you mean nothing until 

you have captured the words and wrung them to the page.

Oh, but the lack of pretty sentiments and

heartfelt metaphors in this may not fulfil you.

I warn you, though, you hopefuls with flowers in your hair:

To write a poem,

be ready for war.