why I write.

other than my pottery, it's my most comfortable medium of communication.
it may sound funny, but it's so much easier for me to pour my soul into a couplet then it is for me to answer a question about the same topic.
some poems will be in my head for weeks at a time.
they'll sit and percolate.
change, rearrange, reformat themselves.
delete and undo.
insert and enter.
even when I am sleeping.
I wish I could write down everything created in my head.
a running list of phrases and hooks. synonyms and rhymes.

I don't worry if people don't know what my poems are about.
If they did fully, they'd have no idea how to react.
The only reason I let anyone read the things I write,
is that I want them to feel.
I want images to pop into their heads.
I want them to think of someone who let them down.
I want them to recall a happy memory with a friend long gone.
I want them to feel at peace with the decisions they've made.
I want them to feel.
I think it's the best anyone can do nowadays.
With everything awful going on in the world, all these "emotions" circulate.
Carbon copies of carbon copies of emotions, never the real thing.
Diluted and weak. Almost too far from what they are meant to be.
We have become desensitizied to things that should normally appall us.
So when someone tells me that upon reading one of my poems they feel something, anything, then it's like.. divinity.
When someone tells me my poems are good, I count it as failure.
But when someone tells me they feel remorseful or contemplative or immeasurably excited, oh man.
I've done what I set out to do.