That Need Which Breeds Monsters Within

There are times when the only appropriate response to the need to write poetry is to go to sleep and pretend that the poem you resisted writing at such a dark hour of the morning was the one that would have eliminated the need to write any other poetry, ever, for the rest of your life. If you had stayed up, if you had written it, you would have completed your purpose on earth.

But you didn’t. So you’ll try again, tomorrow, even though the poem written after sleeping is never raw enough to meet your needs. You know you will still have that one in you somewhere, but keeping it at arm’s length, while cowardly, is a survival strategy.