A POET WRITES

For no reason whatsoever does he write.
Unless keeping his sanity counts.
But of course poems may not maintain
his sanity.
Nothing may do this.
For is not a poet mad anyway, for no reason,
or all reasons?
Is he not mad by his very nature, crazed since
birth, born into some unwanted world, unwanted
by this world, yet needed by this world?
The way a sick man needs medicine.
As if the world were the man and the poet
were some potion to relief it.
My god, what a selfish conceit.
To even think it is a clear sign of the poet’s
insanity, his permanent state.
Because he dreams, endlessly dreams.
In a waking state he dreams.
There is no other reason for being.
No other order, if there is order in his dreams.
The poems will come anyway.
Pointless or with great point.
What matter?
The poet writes while his heart breaks
with each new poem, with each new word,
each tiny bit of punctuation,
which become no more than the definitions
of his own self destruction.
Poems will write the poet if he continues.
And this is his only hope.