The Middlewesterner

“How do you
do that,” they

asked the poet,
“compose poetry

at seventy
miles per hour?”

“It's in the
hands,” he said, “all

in the hands.”

“You go up the mountain,”
said the poet,

“so you can come down.
It's the coming down

that's important.
Don't pretend otherwise.”

“Let it loose,” he said,
“whatever it is.

Let it loose. There's
no telling what

will come of it.”

“What makes us
poets?” He responded,

“We can't outrun
our demons.”

“You say you need inspiration?”
he said. “Kick the sleeping bear.”

“Writer's block?”
the poet said.

“Maybe you should
drive truck.

There is no
truck driver's block.”

“The young write long
poems,” he said, “though

the old may have
more to say.”

“Set it down,”
the poet said.

“Leave it there.
If it's yours,

it will come
when you call it.”

“Sometimes so many
words come to me,”

the poet said, “I
can't hear myself.”

“Words,”
the poet said,

“you can't
use them all,

only yours.
The first task

is to know
which are yours.”

“Write some thing,”
the poet tells them.

“Write any thing.”

“Layers!” he said.
“They want layers!

It's all I can do
to find the surface.”

“Oh, yes,”
he said,
“I have

wasted
my life

with poetry.
Guilty
as charged.”

“Do you do drugs?”
they asked him.
“We don't understand you.”

“I am a poet,” he said.
“No need for drugs.”

“You know,” he said,
“if you're going to
write poetry,

you might as well
play the horses.
People understand

that, at least.”

“Too much hurry
to worry.

Cannot wait to
lay words straight.

Let them tumble,
roll and tumble,

all night long.
Too much hurry

to worry.”

“You say you want to,
so why aren't you?”

“Like a joke
without a straight-man,

without the punch-line,
only more.”

“A sonnet and a few
bucks will buy you coffee,”

he said, “where a sonnet
alone won't get you

even the empty cup.”

“Words, words, words, words,
and what they mean, or might.

Sound and the echo of it
back, and nothing.”