the devil stops by
to offer you a deal:

give up all your poems,
past present and future,

and you’ll at last know peace.
what do you do?

do you run to the fireplace.
toss in your awful mounds of paper,

throw a match into all that pressure
and watch your story disappear?

do you then turn to the devil and smile
and say “now what?”

because you know that whatever the devil
has planned it’s gotta be good;

or do you turn your back on the devil,
sit back at the desk,

open a new document on the computer
and type, “now what?” for an opening line

without knowing what it will take
to answer that?

every life is uncertain, alternately terrible and beautiful,
you tell the devil,

and you have yet to write the poems
that explain that.